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MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 



IN 



THE CHILD AND THE RACE 



Methods and Processes 



BY 

JAMES MARK BALDWIN 

M.A., Ph.D., Hon.D.Sc. (Oxon.), LL.D. (Glasgow, etc.) 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY; 

AUTHOR OF " HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY," ETC. ; CO-EDITOR OF 

" THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW " 



WITH SEVENTEEN FIGURES AND TEN TABLES 



THIRD EDITION, REVISED 
{SEVENTH PRINTING) 



Nefo fgotfc 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1906 

All rights reserved 



^ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

NOV 30 1906 

\ Copyright Entry 
J Wif.3 0, /fffU 
CLASS A XXC, NO. 

/Lt 8+1. 

COPY B. ' 



Copyright, 1894 and 1906, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1895. 
Reprinted November, 1895; December, 1896; Septem- 
ber, 1898; July, 1900; February, 1903. 

Third edition, revised throughout, November, 1906. 



NorroaoU $resg 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 
IN THE CHILD AND THE RACE 

METHODS AND PROCESSES 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

SOCIAL AND ETHICAL INTERPRETATIONS IN MEN- 
TAL DEVELOPMENT: A Study in Social Psychology. 
New York and London, Macmillans. Fourth Edition, 1906. 
Translated into French and German. Awarded Gold Medal 
of the Royal Academy of Denmark. 

DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION. Same publishers. 
One volume. Uniform with Mental Development and 
Social and Ethical Interpretations. 1902. 

DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 

Edited (with an international corps of contributors) by 

J. Mark Baldwin. 3 vols, in 4 parts. New York and 
London, Macmillans. 1901-1906. 

THOUGHT AND THINGS, OR GENETIC LOGIC: A Study 
of the Development and Meaning of Thought. Vol. I., 
Functional Logic, or Genetic Theory of Knowledge. London, 
Sonnenschein ; New York, Macmillans. 1906. 



• FILIOLIS • MEIS 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 

(abridged) 

In writing this book I have had rather conflicting aims. It 
was begun as a series of articles reporting observations on 
infants, published in part in the journal Science, 1890-1892. 
In the prosecution of this purpose, however, I found it neces- 
sary constantly to enlarge my scope for the entertainment of a 
widened genetic view. This came to clearer consciousness in the 
treatment of the child's imitations, especially when I came to 
the relation of imitation to volition, as' treated in my paper be- 
fore the London Congress of Experimental Psychology in 1892. 
The further study of this subject brought what was to me such a 
revelation of the genetic function of imitation that I then deter- 
mined — under the inspiration, also, of the small group of writers 
lately treating the subject — to work out a theory of mental devel- 
opment in the child, incorporating this new insight. 

This occupied my thought, and was made the topic of my 
graduate Seminar in psychology at Princeton, in 1893-1894, the 
result being the conviction that no consistent view of mental 
development in the individual could possibly be reached with- 
out a doctrine of the race development of consciousness, — i.e. 
the great problem of the evolution of mind. 

I then fell to reading again the literature of biological evolu- 
tion, with view to a possible synthesis of the current biological 
theory of organic adaptation with the doctrine of the infant's 
development, as my previous work had led me to formulate it. 



viii Preface to the First Edition 

This is the problem of Spencer and Romanes. My book is then 
mainly a treatise on this problem; but the method of approach 
to it which I have described, accounts for the preliminaries and 
incidents of treatment which make my book so different in its 
topics and arrangement from theirs, and from any work constructed 
from the start with a 'System of Genetic Psychology' in view. 

For this reason the question of arrangement was an excessively 
difficult one to me. The relations of individual development 
to race development are so intimate — the two are so identical, 
in fact — that no topic in the one can be treated with great clear- 
ness without assuming results in the other. So any order of 
treatment in such a work must seem finally to be only the least 
of possible evils. 

My final arrangement of chapters presents, however, when a 
patient reader is in front of the page, a fair degree of reason, I 
think. The earliest chapters (I. to VI.) are devoted to the state- 
ment of the genetic problem, with reports of the facts of infant 
life and the methods of investigating them, and the mere teasing 
out of the strings of law on which the facts are beaded — the prin- 
ciples of Suggestion, Habit, Accommodation, etc. These chapters 
have their own end as well, giving researches of some value, 
possibly, for psychology and education. They serve their pur- 
pose also in the progress of the book, as giving a statement of 
the central problem of motor adaptation. Chapter V. gives a 
detailed analysis of one voluntary function, Handwriting. Then 
follows the theory of adaptation, stated in general terms in Chap- 
ters VII. and VIII. ; and afterwards comes a genetic view in 
detail (Chaps. IX. to XVI.) of the progress of mental development 
in its great stages, Memory, Association, Attention, Thought, 
Self-consciousness, Volition. So the whole is a whole, the theory 
resting upon an induction of facts (put before it) and supported 



Preface to the First Edition ix 

by the deduction of facts (put after). It is now (3d ed.) divided 
into four parts, ' Introduction,' ' Experimental Foundation,' 
1 Biological Development,' and ' Psychological Development.' 

The book really represents, therefore, five years of very close 
work ; and the distribution of the topics over this period accounts 
for the fact that the chapters, in many instances, include in more 
or less modified form articles which I have contributed to the 
reviews. It will now be clear that all were written in the 
course of development of one intellectual impulse, and so have 
their only adequate presentation and justification in this volume. 
I am indebted to the editors and publishers of certain journals 
for this present use of some of the material, e.g. Mind, The 
Philosophical Review, The Psychological Review, The American 
Journal of Psychology, The Popular Science Monthly, The Century 
Magazine, Science, The Educational Review. 

There are certain other great provinces, besides, which I find 
capable of fruitful exploration with the same theoretical prin- 
ciples. Of course, genetic psychology ought to lay the only solid 
foundation for education, both in its method and its results. And 
it is equally true, though it has never been adequately realized, 
that it is in genetic theory that social or collective psychology 
must find both its root and its ripe fruitage. We have no social 
psychology, because we have had no doctrine of the socius. We 
have had theories of the ego and the alter; but that they did not 
reveal the socius is just their condemnation. So the theorist 
of society and institutions has floundered in seas of metaphysics 
and biology, and no psychologist has brought him a life-preserver, 
nor even heard his cry for help. These aspects of the subject I 
hope to take up in somewhat the same way in another work, already 
well under way, to bear the same general title as this volume, but 
to be known by the sub-title, Social and Ethical Interpretations, 



x Preface to the First Edition 

in contrast with the Methods and Processes, by which this book 
is described more particularly on the title-page. It will endeavour 
to find a basis in the natural history of man as a social being for the 
theory and practice of the activities in which his life of education, 
social co-operation, and duty involves him. 

Many of the particular points of view of this proposed work 
are indicated by foot-notes in this volume, on pages where the 
principles discussed strike deeper into the social life. Such inti- 
mations are especially brought out in Chapters X. to XVI. 

The classes of men whom I hope therefore to interest are first, 
of course, psychologists, — in my theories, — and then teachers 
and writers on education, — in the outcome. I have not had the 
latter class in mind as much in this book as I do in the later one, 
for obvious reasons; but yet I hope the treatment will be found 
untechnical enough to profit teachers who are not professed 
psychologists. To this end all the original observations and 
experiments on children which are scattered through the book 
are gathered in a list in Appendix I. 

Then there are the biologists — one almost despairs of them ! 
Are there any yet born to follow the two I have named in finding 
mind as interesting as life? We must believe that the future is 
big with them, — and the near future, too. But if any biologist 
is willing to listen, he may care to recognize in the chorus of 
those who are singing the praise of the ruler of our time, the 
naturalist, and playing to him on instruments — the tibia of the 
archaic horse, the antennae of the hymenoptera, the many stops 
of the hydra's legs — the plaintive note of one who but tries to 
interpret the wail of the human babe! But I am not prepared 
to dispute the point with any of my readers who find such an 
expectation quite too optimistic. 1 

1 The ten years since this was written have brought a remarkable change 
in the attitude of biologists toward psychology. 



Preface to the First Edition xi 

There is one point in the range of the great topic of develop- 
ment itself to which I wish to refer, in order to avoid misun- 
derstanding. I believe in the widest possible expansion of the 
idea of natural history as applied to consciousness. But I also 
believe that the natural history question is not the same as the 
question of the essence or nature or explanation of mind. Phi- 
losophy has its problem just the same, however consciousness 
arose, and no amount of evolution theory can settle the problem 
set by philosophy. I hope to take up this question of ' origin 

vs. nature' later on. 1 

J. M. B. 
Princeton, N.J., March, 1895. 

1 The reader may now compare the article of that title in the writer's 
Diet, of P kilos, and Psychol, 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 

In passing into this edition this book is celebrating its full dec- 
ade. It has been reprinted now seven times and translated into 
French and German, and the demand for it indicates the interest 
taken in genetic discussions. In view of this new interest, and 
of the need of it — the need of bringing into psychology the 
genetic and biological points of view — for which the book origi- 
nally stood, I have decided to leave it in essentials practically as 
originally written. The revision has been mainly in matters of 
details of fact, and of exactness of exposition; but the leading 
theories, which have had their part in stimulating newer discus- 
sions, remain about as originally presented. 1 They are now 
supplemented by the later volumes of the series, Social and 
Ethical Interpretations (4th edition, 1906), Development and Evo- 
lution (1902), and the first part of the treatment of Genetic 
Logic, the work called Thought and Things (Vol. L, 1906). I 
have undertaken to prepare a single volume on the 'Principles of 
Genetic Science,' in which the leading ideas of this series of books 
will be thrown together in concise and reasoned form. In that 
volume the net outcome of the whole endeavour will be estimated 
and set forth in relation to the latest literature of the several 
sciences to which these earlier books respectively relate. 

In this edition the changes already embodied in the French 

1 The longer additions are to be found in Chap. XV. (on Control, and on 
Attention), Chap. XVI. (on Pain as Sensation, and on 'Excessive' Pain 
Reactions) , and in Appendix C. 



xiv Preface to the Third Edition 

and German versions are now incorporated. On certain pages, 

moreover, on which topics are treated of which later thought has 

developed and modified the views expressed reference is made to 

the publications embodying these further views. This is especially 

the case with the ' social' matters carried further in Social and 

Ethical Interpretations ; with the biological matters, especially 

the theory of evolution by organic selection, worked out in the 

volume Development and Evolution; with the motor theory of 

general notions which is essentially developed and also restricted 

in the sections on ' General Meaning ' in Thought and Things, 

where the treatment of the cognitive operations is full and explicit. 

Readers who care to follow out any of these matters are thus 

supplied with data for judging of the writer's more extended 

views. In the literary citations added in the course of the work the 

reader will find indications of personal judgment upon the newer 

publications. I cannot refrain from making more specific reference 

here, however, to Principal Lloyd Morgan's Habit and Instinct, 

Professor Groos' Play of Animals and Play of Man, and Professor 

Jennings's Behaviour of Lower Organisms. In these - books 

certain of the positions of this work have been notably confirmed, 

corrected, and advanced. 

J. M. B. 

Johns Hopkins University, 
Baltimore, October, 1906. 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 
CHAPTER I 

PAGES 

Infant and Race Psychology ^ , 1-33 

§ 1. Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis, the Genetic Point of View 1-12 

§2. Race Psychology : Phylogenesis 12-14 

§3. Analogies of Development : Epochs of Development . 14-19 
§ 4. Variations in Ontogeny : s Organic and Mental Recapitula- 
tion 19-33 

CHAPTER II 

A New Method of Child Study 34-47 

§ 1. Critical: Earlier Methods 34-40 

§ 2. Expository : the Dynamogenic Method . . . . 40-44 

§ 3. Formula of the Dynamogenic Method .... 44-47 



PART I. EXPERIMENTAL FOUNDATION 

CHAPTER III 

Distance and Colour Perception by Infants .... 48-55 

§ 1. Experimental : Colour, Distance 48-53 

§ 2. Critical : Estimate of Results . . . . . . 53—55 

CHAPTER IV 

The Origin of Right-handedness 56—77 

§ 1. Experimental: Arrangements and Results . . . 56-63 
§ 2. Interpretation : Neurological and Race Considerations ; 

Modification of Formula of Method .... 63-77 
xv 



xvi Contents 

CHAPTER V 

PAGES 

Infants' Movements 78-99 

§ 1. Descriptive: Reflexes; the Child's Drawings; Rise of 

Tracery Imitation 78-88 

§ 2. Interpretation of Tracery Imitation : The Origin and 

Analysis of Handwriting 88-99 

CHAPTER VI 

Suggestion 100-160 

§ 1. Definition and Criticism 100-104 

§ 2. Physiological Suggestion 104-109 

§ 3. Sensori-motor : General, Personality, Deliberative Sugges- 
tion 109-123 

§ 4. Ideo-motor : Simple Imitative Suggestion, Resume of 

Suggestions of Infancy 1 23-128 

§ 5. Subconscious Adult Suggestion: Tune-suggestion, Influ- 
ence of Dreams, Auto-suggestion, Sense-exaltation . 128-135 

§ 6. Inhibitory Suggestion : Pain, Control, and Contrary Sug- 
gestion; Bashfulness 135-149 

§7. Hypnotic Suggestion : the Facts, the Theory . . . 149-157 

§ 8. The Law of Dynamogenesis : Habit and Accommodation 157-160 



PART II. BIOLOGICAL GENESIS 

CHAPTER VII 

The Theory of Development 161-208 

§ I. Organic Adaptation in General 161-171 

§ 2. The Current Theory of Adaptation: Darwin, Spencer, 

Bain 171-193 

§ 3. Development and Heredity: Neo-Darwinism and Neo- 

Lamarckism I 93 _I 97 

§ 4. The Origin of Consciousness 197-203 

§ 5. Outcome : Habit and Accommodation .... 203-208 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Origin of Motor Attitudes and Expressions . . 209-248 
§ 1. General View 209-211 



Contents xvii 

PAGES 

§ 2. The Theory of ■ Emotional Expression ' : Applications of 

Principles of Habit, Accommodation, Dynamogenesis 21 1-225 

§ 3. Hedonic Expression and its Law 225-226 

§ 4. Habitual Motor Attitudes : Principles of Antithesis, Asso- 
ciated Habits, Analogous Stimuli .... 226-248 

CHAPTER IX 

Organic Imitation . 249-275 

§ 1. The General Question 249-253 

§ 2. The Neurological Question 253-264 

§ 3. The Physical Basis of Memory and Association . . 264-275 



PART III. PSYCHOLOGICAL GENESIS 

CHAPTER X 

Conscious Imitation (begun) : The Origin of Memory and 

Imagination 276-305 

§ I. General Facts and Explanations 276-286 

§ 2. The Origin of Memory and Association .... 286-292 

§ 3. Assimilation and Recognition 292-302 

§ 4. Phylogenetic Value of Memory and Imagination . . 302-305 

CHAPTER XI 

Conscious Imitation (continued) : The Origin of Thought 

and Emotion 306-331 

§ 1. Conception and Thought 306-314 

§ 2. Conception as Class-recognition 314-316 

§3. Emotion and Sentiment : Self and the Social Sense . 316-331 

CHAPTER XII 

Conscious Imitation (concluded) 332-348 

§ 1. Classification 33 2- 335 

§ 2. Plastic Imitation 335-339 

§ 3. How to observe Imitation in Children .... 339-348 



XV111 



Contents 



CHAPTER XIII 

PAGES 

The Origin of Volition 349-408 

§ 1. Analysis of Volition : Deliberation, Desire, Effort . . 349-354 
§ 2. The Typical Case of Rise of Volition in the Child : Per- 
sistent Imitation . 354~366 

§ 3. Phylogenetic 366-369 

§ 4. Special Evidence 369-404 

§ 5. Ontogenetic : Variations in the Rise of Volition . . 404-408 

CHAPTER XIV 

The Mechanism of Revival: Internal Speech and Song . 409-427 

§ 1. Internal Speech : How do we think of Words ? . . 409-416 

§2. Internal Song : How do we think of Tunes? . . . 416-419 

§3. Pitch Recognition : How do we know Notes? . . 419-427 

CHAPTER XV 

The Origin of Attention 4 2 8-45 J 

§ 1. Voluntary Attention 428-435 

§ 2. Reflex and ' Primary ' Attention 435~436 

§ 3. The Development of Attention : Sensori-motor Associa- 
tion 436-448 

§ 4. Voluntary Acquisition and Control 448-45 1 



PART IV. GENERAL SYNTHESIS 

CHAPTER XVI 

Summary: Final Statement of Habit and Accommodation. 452-467 

§ 1. Summary of Theory of Development .... 452-456 

§ 2. Interaction of Habit and Accommodation . . . 45 6 -457 

§3. Organic Centralization : Pain, Attention .... 457-467 



APPENDIX B. Colonel Mallery on Sign Languages . 469-47 x 

APPENDIX C. I and II 47J-473 

I. Learning from Experience • 47 I_ 47 2 

II. Fluctuations of Attention 47 2 "473 

INDEX 475-477 



MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 
IN THE CHILD AND THE RACE 

METHODS AND PROCESSES 



MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE 
CHILD AND THE RACE 

INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER I 

Infant and Race Psychology 

The study of psychology has had so remarkable a de- 
velopment in recent years, and the standpoint from which 
it is now approached is so unlike the point of view of older 
writers on mental philosophy, that the several depart- 
ments which it now comprises stand in need of separate 
introductions ; and not only are such introductions necessary 
for purposes of exposition, but their apologetic function, 
though reduced to a minimum, is still real. The expression 
'nursery psychologist' no doubt means what its author 
intended it to mean, to some others than himself; and 
it is desirable that it should be understood by the educated 
public as a badge of honourable service rather than as a 
phrase of disparagement and discredit. 

§ i. Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis 

No doubt we owe to the rise of the evolution idea some- 
thing at least of the benefit brought about by what we may 
call the psychological renaissance of the last twenty-five 



2 Infant and Race Psychology 

or thirty years. The breadth of the current conception of 
psychology is certainly in harmony with the conceptions 
long ago current in other departments of scientific research ; 
but there is a phase of this broadening of psychological 
inquiry strikingly brought out only when interpreted in 
the light of evolution doctrine. This is what we may call 
the genetic phase, the growth phase. The older idea of the 
soul was of a fixed substance, with fixed attributes. Knowl- 
edge of the soul was immediate in consciousness, and 
adequate ; at least, as adequate as such knowledge could be 
made. The mind was best understood where best or most 
fully manifested; its higher 'faculties/ even when not in 
operation, were still there, but asleep. 

Under such a conception, the man was father to the 
child. What the adult consciousness discovers in itself is 
true, and wherein the child lacks it falls short of the true 
stature of soul life. We must, therefore, if we take account 
of the child -mind at all, interpret it up to the revelations 
of the man-mind. If the adult consciousness shows the 
presence of principles not observable in the child conscious- 
ness, we must suppose, nevertheless, that they are really 
present in the child consciousness beyond the reach of our 
observation. The old argument was this, — and it is 
not too old to be found in the metaphysics of to-day, — 
consciousness reveals certain great ideas as simple and 
original: consequently they must be so. If you do not 
find them in the child -mind, then you must read them into 
it. 

The genetic idea reverses all this. Instead of a fixed 
substance, we have the conception of a growing, develop- 
ing activity. Functional psychology succeeds faculty psy- 
chology. Instead of beginning with the most elaborate 
exhibition of this growth and development, we shall find 



Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis 3 

most instruction in the simplest activity that is at the same 
time the same activity. Development is a process of involu- 
tion as well as of evolution, and the elements come to be 
hidden under the forms of complexity which they build up. 
Are there principles in the adult consciousness which do not 
appear in the child consciousness, then the adult conscious- 
ness must, if possible, be interpreted by principles present 
in the child consciousness ; and when this is not possible, the 
conditions under which later principles take their rise and 
get their development must still be adequately explored. 

Now that this genetic conception has arrived, it is aston- 
ishing that it did not arrive sooner, and it is astonishing 
that the 'new' psychology has hitherto made so little use 
of it. The difference between description and explanation 
is as old as science itself. What chemist long remains 
satisfied with a description of the substances found in nature ? 
He is no investigator at all. His science was not born 
until he became an analyst. The student of philology 
is not content with a description, a grammar, of spoken 
languages: he desiderates their reduction to common vocal 
elements, and aims to discover the laws of their genetic 
development. But the mental scientist has called such 
description science, even when he has had examples of 
nature's own furnishing around him which would have 
confirmed or denied the results of mental analysis. 

The advantages which we look to infant psychology to 
furnish, meet just this need of analysis; and the reason 
that the needed analysis is found here, is that the mind, 
like all other natural things, grows. This general state- 
ment may be put into concrete form under several points, 
which divide this branch of general psychology from others 
now recognized. 

1. In the first place, the phenomena of the infant con- 



4 Infant and Race Psychology 

sciousness are simple as opposed to reflective; that is, they 
are the child's presentations or memories simply, not his 
own observations of them. In the adult consciousness the 
disturbing influences of inner observation is a matter of 
notorious moment. It is impossible for me to know exactly 
what I feel, for the apprehending of it through the attention 
alters its character. My volition also is a complex thing of 
alternatives, one of which is my personal pride and self- 
conscious egotism. But the child's emotion is as spontaneous 
as a spring. The effects of it in the mental life come out in 
action, pure and uninfluenced by calculation and duplicity 
and adult reserve. There is around every one of us a web of 
convention and prejudice of our own making. Not only do 
we reflect the social formalities of our environment, and thus 
lose the distinguishing spontaneities of childhood, but each 
one of us builds up his own little world of seclusion and 
formality with himself. We are subject not only to 'idols 
of the forum,' but also to 'idols of the den.' 

The child, on the contrary, has not learned his own im- 
portance, his pedigree, his beauty, his social place, his reli- 
gion, his paternal disgrace ; and he has not observed himself 
through all these and countless other lenses of time, place, 
and circumstance. He has not yet turned himself into an 
idol nor the world into a temple ; and we can study him apart 
from the complex accretions which are the later deposits of 
his self-consciousness. 

Perhaps one of the best illustrations we can find of the 
value of this consideration in the study of the child-mind 
is seen in the reversion to the child-type occasioned by 
hypnotism. One of the signal services of hypnotism, I 
think, is the demonstration of the intrinsic motor force of 
an idea. Any idea tends at once to realize itself in action. 
All conventionalities, proprieties, alternatives, hesitations, 



Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis 5 

are swept away, and the developed mind reveals its skele- 
ton structure, so to speak, its composition from reactive 
elements. But hypnotism need not have been waited for 
to show this. The patient observation of the movements 
of a child during his first year would have put it among the 
safest generalizations of the science of mind. In the ab- 
sence of alternative considerations, reflections, the child 
acts, and act it must, on the first suggestion which has the 
faintest meaning in terms of its sensations of movement. 

2. The study of children is often the only means of testing 
the truth of our mental analyses. If we decide that a cer- 
tain complex product is due to a union of simpler mental 
elements, then we may appeal to the proper period of child- 
life to see the union taking place. The range of growth is 
so enormous from the infant to the adult, and the beginnings 
of the child's mental life are so low in the scale, in the matter 
of mental and moral endowment, that there is hardly a ques- 
tion of analysis now under debate which may not be tested 
by this method. 

On the other hand, that such confirmation shuts out 
most conclusively the advocates of irreducibility in many 
cases, seems to admit of no question. A good example 
of such analysis is seen in the distinction between simple 
consciousness and self-consciousness. Over and over again 
have systems been built upon the subject -object theory of 
consciousness; namely, that personality, subjectivity, con- 
sciousness in any form, necessarily implicated an antithesis, 
in consciousness, between ego and non-ego. But an example 
of what is thus denied may be seen upon the floor of any 
nursery where there is a child less than six months of age. 

At this point it is that child psychology is more valuable 
than the study of the consciousness of animals. The latter 
never become men, while children do. The animals repre- 



6 Infant and Race Psychology 

sent in some few respects a branch of the tree of growth in 
advance of man, while being in many other respects very far 
behind him. In studying animals we are always haunted 
by the fear that the analogy may not hold ; that some element 
essential to the development of the human mind may not 
discover itself at all. Even in such a question as the localiza- 
tion of the motor functions of the brain, where the analogy 
is one of comparative anatomy and only secondarily of psy- 
chology, the monkey presents analogies with man which 
dogs do not. But in the study of children we may be always 
sure that a normal child has in him the promise of a normal 
man. 

The contrast between this branch of psychology and 
mental pathology also shows points of advantage on the side 
of the former. In the study of mental disease all the mental 
functions are or may be involved. We are never sure that 
functional connections and sympathies have not been de- 
veloped in the growth of the personality as a whole, which are 
liable to derangement with other processes very remote 
from them. For example, instinct is modified by the growth 
of volition; so that in cases of diseased volition, we do not 
find that the instincts corresponding to those of the creatures 
which do not attain volition are left intact. For this reason 
the application of the logical 'method of difference,' which 
consists in observing the change brought about in a phenom- 
enon from the removal of part of its antecedent conditions, 
cannot be always relied upon. It is further true that, in 
the child, the whole nature is growing together, so that the 
absence of one function does not mean the violent uninhibited 
exercise of others, as is the case with diseased adult patients. 

One of the same difficulties confronts the student of 
animal pathology. The indefinite source of error called 
'shock' is always present. The organs left intact by the 



Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis 7 

disease or by the operator 'sympathize' in the sufferings of 
the organism as a whole ; and sometimes loss of function is 
reported, when time afterwards repairs the damage. 

In dealing with the child, however, the same advantage 
of simplicity is secured without the corresponding disad- 
vantage of possible interference of functions. In other 
words, the simplicity of the child is normal simplicity, 
while the simplicity of disease or surgery is abnormal sim- 
plicity; and the danger of what physicians call 'complica- 
tion' is in the former case entirely ruled out. 

3. Again, in the study of the child-mind, we have the 
added advantage of a corresponding simplicity on the organic 
side ; that is, we are able to take account of the physiological 
processes at a time when they are relatively simple. I say 
'relatively simple,' for in reality they are enormously complex 
at birth, and the embryologist pushes his researches much 
farther back in the life history of the organism. But yet they 
are simple relatively to their condition after the formation of 
habits, motor complexes, brain connections and associations ; 
in short, after the nervous system has been educated to its 
whole duty in its living environment. For example : a psy- 
chology which holds that we have a ' speech faculty,' an origi- 
nal mental endowment which is incapable of further reduc- 
tion, may appeal to the latest physiological research and 
find organic confirmation, at least as far as a determination 
of its cerebral apparatus is concerned; but such support 
for the position is wanting when we return to the brain of the 
infant. Not only do we fail to find the series of centres into 
which the organic basis of speech has been divided, but even 
those of them which we do find have not taken up the func- 
tion, either alone or together, which they perform when speech 
is actually realized. In other words, the primary object of 
each of the various centres involved is not speech, but some 



8 Infant and Race Psychology 

other and simpler function ; and speech arises by develop- 
ment from a union of these separate functions. 

We accordingly find a development of consciousness 
keeping pace with the development of the physical organ- 
ism. The extent of possible analogies between the growth 
of body and that of mind may thus be estimated from below ; 
and any outstanding facts of the inner life which cannot be 
correlated with facts of the physical organism get greater 
prominence and safer estimation. 

4. In observing young children, a more direct applica- 
tion of the experimental method is possible. 1 By 'experi- 
ment' here, I mean both experiment on the senses and also 
experiment directly on consciousness by suggestion, social 
influence, etc. In experimenting on adults, great difficulties 
arise through the fact that reactions — such as performing a 
voluntary movement when a signal is heard, etc., — are broken 
at the centre by deliberation, habitual desire, choice, etc., 
and closed again by a conscious voluntary act. The subject 
hears a sound, identifies it, and presses a button — if he 
choose and agree to do so. What goes on in this interval 
between the advent of the incoming nerve process and the 
discharge of the outgoing nerve process? Something, at 
any rate, which represents a brain process of great complexity. 
Now, anything that fixes this sensori-motor connection or 
simplifies the central process, in so far gives greater certainty 
to the results. For this reason, experiments on reflex reac- 
tions are valuable and decisive where similar experiments 
on voluntary reactions are uncertain and of doubtful value. 
Now the fact that the child consciousness is relatively simple, 
and so offers a field for more fruitful experiment, is illustrated 
in what is said in the following pages about suggestion in 

1 On the nature and application of experiment in psychology, see my 
Handbook of Psychology, L, 2d ed., pp. 25-31. 



Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis 9 

infant life ; it is also seen in the mechanical reactions of an 
infant to strong stimuli, such as bright colors, etc. 1 Of 
course, this is the point where originality must be exercised 
in the devising and executing of experiments. After the sub- 
ject is a little better developed, new experimentation will be 
as difficult here as in the other sciences; but at present the 
simplest phenomena of child life and activity are open to the 
investigator. 

With this inadequate review of the advantages of infant 
psychology, it is well also to point out the dangers of the 
abuse of such a branch of inquiry. Such dangers are real. 
The very simplicity which seems to characterize the life 
of the child is often extremely misleading, and misleading 
because the simplicity in question is not always typical 
but may be to a degree individual. Mr. Spencer had a large 
range of facts in view when he said that organic development 
involved progress not only in complexity, but also in definite - 
ness ; and the distinction between simplicity which indicates 
mere absence of complexity, and that which indicates definite - 
ness of function as well, applies with great force to mental 
growth. Two nervous reactions may appear equally simple ; 
but one may be an adaptive reaction learned with great pains 
and really very complex in its elements, while the other may 
be inadaptive and really simple. So a state of infant con- 
sciousness may seem to involve no complexity or integration, 
and yet turn out to represent, by reason of its very apparent 
simplicity and definiteness, a mass of individual or race 
development. It is a corollary from this that children differ 
under the law of heredity very remarkably, even in the sim- 
plest manifestations of their conscious lives. It is never safe, 
except under the qualifications mentioned below, to say, 

1 See below, Chaps. III. to VI. 



io Infant and Race Psychology 

'This child did, consequently all children must.' The most 
we can usually say in observing single infants is, 'This 
child did, consequently another child may.' Yet the uncer- 
tainties of the case may be summed up and avoided if certain 
principles of mental development are kept in view. 

i. In the first place, we can fix no absolute time in the 
history of the mind at which a certain mental function takes 
its rise. The observations, now quite extensively recorded, 
and sometimes quoted as showing that the first year, or the 
second year, etc., brings such and such developments, tend, 
on the contrary, to show that such divisions do not hold in 
any strict sense. Like any organic growth, the nervous 
system may develop faster under more favourable conditions, 
or more slowly under less favourable; and the growth of 
mental faculty is largely dependent upon such organic 
growth. Only in broad outline and by the widest generaliza- 
tion can such epochs be marked off at all. 

2. The possibility of the occurrence of a mental phe- 
nomenon must be distinguished from its necessity. The 
occurrence of a single clearly observed event is decisive only 
against the theory according to which its occurrence under 
the given conditions may not occur; that is, the cause 
of the event is proved not to lie among agencies or conditions 
which are absent. For example: the very early adaptive 
movements of the infant in receiving its food cannot be due 
to volition ; but the case is still open for the question, what is 
the sufficient reason of their presence, i.e. how much ner- 
vous development is present, how much experience is neces- 
sary, etc. It is well to emphasize the fact that one case may 
be decisive in overthrowing a theory, but the conditions are 
seldom simple enough to make one case decisive in establish- 
ing a theory. 

3. It follows from the principle of growth itself that the 



Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis n 

order of development of the mental functions is constant, 
and normally free from variation; consequently, the most 
fruitful observations of children are those which show that 
such a function was present before another could be ob- 
served. The complexity becomes finally so remarkable 
that there seems to be no before or after at all in mental 
things ; but if the child's processes show stages in which any 
element is clearly absent, we have at once light upon the 
law of growth. For example : if a single case is conclusively 
established of a child's drawing an inference before it begins 
to use words or significant vocal sounds, the one case is as 
good as a thousand to show that thought develops to a degree 
independently of spoken language. 1 

4. While the most direct results are acquired by system- 
atic experiments with a given point in view, still general 
observations kept regularly, and carefully recorded, are 
important for the interpretation which a great many such 
records may afford in the end. In the multitude of expe- 
riences here, as everywhere, there is strength. Such ob- 
servations should cover everything about the child, — his 
movements, cries, impulses, sleep, dreams, personal pref- 
erences, muscular efforts, attempts at expression, games, 
favourites, etc., — and should be recorded in a regular day- 
book at the time of occurrence. What is important and 
what is not, is, of course, something to be learned ; and it 
is extremely desirable that any one contemplating such 
observations should acquaint himself beforehand with the 
principles of general psychology and physiology, espe- 
cially the former, and seek also the practical advice of a 
trained observer. 2 

1 Yet even this rule is subject to the modifications given below in this 
chapter, § 4, II. 

2 See Chap. XII., § 3, below, on the method of observing children's 

imitations. 



12 Infant and Race Psychology 

§ 2. Race Psychology: Phylogenesis 

If we adopt a distinction in terminology which the biolo- 
gists use, and call the development of a single life or mind 
its ontogenesis, and, on the other hand, call the life history of 
the race, or of consciousness in all the forms of animal life, 
the phylogenesis of mind, it will be seen that what I have said 
about infant psychology falls under the former head. Before 
we proceed to take up the special questions to which this book 
is devoted, it may be well to indicate the place of phylogenetic 
inquiry. 

The phrase 'Race Psychology ' is commonly used in a 
narrow sense, having reference to the characteristic mental 
peculiarities of various peoples, tribes, stages of civilization, 
cults, etc. That is, the word 'race' is applied to the human 
race. The points of comparison, on the other hand, between 
human and animal consciousness, fall under so-called Com- 
parative Psychology. I take the liberty, however, of extend- 
ing the meaning of the former phrase to include the history 
of consciousness, very much as the phrase 'race experience ' 
is used to include the full wealth of inheritance derived, as it 
is held to be, from ancestral life of whatever kind. The 
problem of 'race psychology' then becomes the problem of 
the phylogenetic development of consciousness, just as 
'individual psychology' deals with its ontogenetic develop- 
ment, both being legitimate branches of genetic as opposed 
to analytic psychology. 

The question of race psychology, as thus understood, is 
an extremely important and, until very lately, a greatly 
neglected question. The presumption in favour of mental 
phylogenesis, arising from the modern evolution theory in 
biology, cannot be duly weighed without the most careful 
and detailed comparative work and the fairest interpretation 



Race Psychology : Phylogenesis 13 

of the concomitance existing between nervous and mental 
growth everywhere. So far as theoretical human psychol- 
ogy has to do with questions of the nature of mind, as op- 
posed to questions of function, it is, I hold, largely indepen- 
dent of questions of origin ; but so far as data of origin must 
be included in the answer to questions of function, just so far 
do they come to throw light on the deeper problems of the 
nature of the mind as well. 1 

Assuming, then, that there is a phylogenetic problem, 
— that is, assuming that mind has had a natural history in 
the animal series, — we are at liberty to use what we know of 
the correspondence between nerve process and conscious 
process, in man and the higher animals, to arrive at hypotheses 
for its solution : 2 to expect general analogies to hold between 
nervous development and mental development, one of which 
is that between race history, epochs and individual history 
epochs through the repetition of phylogenesis in ontogenesis, 
called in biology ' Recapitulation ' ; to view the plan of de- 
velopment of the two series of facts taken together as a 
common one in race history, as we are convinced it is in 
individual history by an overwhelming weight of evidence; 
to accept the criteria established by biological research on one 
side of this correspondence, — the organic, — while we expect 
biology to accept the criteria established on the other side by 

1 For a later full discussion of 'Origin vs. Nature,' see the writer's article 
on that topic in his Dictionary of Philosophy, II. 

2 Such a hypothesis is that of a 'uniform psycho-physical connection' 
which is commonly held to apply in two great spheres in which it has not 
as yet been proved, viz. the sphere of volition (see, however, Chap. XIV. 
below) on the one hand, and that of the lower nervous centres on the other. 
The two questions which uniformity supposes answered in the affirmative are, 
accordingly: has volition a nervous process? and, do the lower nervous 
ganglia have consciousness? The theory of 'Psycho-physical Parallelism' 
has detailed discussion in the later volume in this series, Development and 
Evolution (Chap. I.). 



14 Infant and Race Psychology 

psychology; and, finally, to admit with equal freedom the 
possibility of an absolute beginning of either series at points, 
if such be found, at which the best conceived criteria on either 
side fail of application. For example : if biology has the 
right to make it a legitimate problem whether the organic 
exhibits a kind of function over and above that supplied 
by the chemical affinities which are the necessary presup- 
positions of life, then the psychologist has the equal right, 
after the same candid rehearsal of the facts in support 
of his criteria, to submit for examination the claim, let us 
say, that 'judgments of worth' represent a kind of 
deliverance which vital functions as such do not give 
rise to. 

The chapters of this book will be found, in various places, 
to involve all these determinations respecting genetic psy- 
chology. One of them, however, — that which relates to the 
analogy between individual and race growth, — carries so 
many preliminary suggestions and yet has received so little 
enforcement in the literature of the topic, that it is well to 
present it at the outset with greater fulness. 

§ 3. Analogies 0} Development 

Students of biology consider the argument for organic 
evolution especially strong in view of the analogy between 
race and individual development. The individual in em- 
bryo passes through stages which represent morphologi- 
cally, to a degree, the stages actually found in the ancestral 
animal series. A similar analogy, when inquired into on 
the side of consciousness, seems on the surface true, since 
we find more and more developed stages of conscious func- 
tion in a series corresponding in the main with the stages 
of nervous growth in the animals; and then we find this 



Analogies of Development 15 

growth paralleled in its great features in the mental devel- 
opment of the human infant. 

The race series seems to require, both on organic grounds 
and from evidence regarding consciousness, a development 
whose major terms are somewhat in this order, 1 i.e. simple 
contractility with the organic analogue of pleasure and pain ; 
nervous integration corresponding to the sense functions, 
including the congeries of muscular sensations, and some 
adaptive movements ; nervous integration to a degree to which 
corresponds mental presentation of objects with higher motor 
organization and reflex attention; greater co-ordination, 
having on the conscious side memory, conscious imitation, 
impulse, instinct, instinctive emotion ; finally, cerebral func- 
tion with conscious thought, voluntary action, and ideal 
emotion. Without insisting on the details of this sketch — 
intended at this point for no more than a sketch — certain 
great epochs of functional differentiation may be clearly seen. 
First, the epoch of the rudimentary sense processes, the 
pleasure and pain process, and simple motor adaptation, 
called for convenience the 'affective epoch': second, the 
epoch of presentation, memory, imitation, defensive action, 
instinct, which passes by gradations into, third, the epoch 
of complex presentation, complex motor co-ordination, of 
conquest, of offensive action, and rudimentary volition. 
These, the second and third together, I should characterize, 
on the side of consciousness, as the 'epoch of objective 
reference.' And fourth, the epoch of thought, reflection, self- 
assertion, social organization, union of forces, co-operation; 
the 'epoch of subjective reference,' which, in human history, 
merges into the 'social and ethical epoch.' 

In the animal world these terms form a series — evident 
enough on the surface — its terms not sharply divided 
1 Some of these points have discussion in later chapters. 



1 6 Infant and Race Psychology 

from one another, not in most instances exclusive before and 
after; but representing great places for emphasis, stages of 
safe acquirement, and outlooks for further growth. So we 
find the invertebrates, the lower vertebrates, the higher 
vertebrates up to, or somewhere near, man, and man — four 
stages. 

The analogy of this series, again, with that of the infant's 
growth, is, in the main, very clear: the child begins in its 
pre-natal and early post-natal experience with blank sensations 
and pleasure and pain with the motor adaptations to which 
they lead, passes into a stage of apprehension of objects with 
response to them by 'suggestion,' imitation, etc., gets to be 
more or less self-controlled, imaginative, and volitional, 
and ultimately becomes reflective, social, and ethical. 

On the side of consciousness, however, we are able safely 
to divide our functional epochs a little more minutely, and 
in those of the following chapters in which ontogenetic 
development is our main point of inquiry this is done. 

A single further distinction is in point here, however; a 
distinction also further justified in a subsequent connec- 
tion. 1 It is evident that if the objective epoch precedes the 
subjective — if the child gets objects and reacts upon them 
at first without reflection, and only later deliberates upon 
their meaning to himself, and then aims at his own pleasure 
or profit in his behaviour toward them — it is evident that 
there will be a great difference between the way he looks at 
other persons at these two stages of his growth respectively. 
Before he understands himself, that is, during the objective 
epoch, he cannot understand others, except as they are also 

1 Below, Chap. VI., § 3, and Chap. XI., § 3; also the volume Social and 
Ethical Interpretations, especially Chap. I. The development of the object 
mode is worked out in detail in the treatise Thought and Things, Vol. I. 
(1906). 



Analogies of Development 17 

objects of a certain kind ; but in learning to understand him- 
self, he also comes to understand them, as like himself, that 
is, as themselves having objects to act toward and upon just 
as he does. Here are, therefore, four very distinct phases 
of the child's experience of persons not himself, all subse- 
quent to his purely affective or pleasure-pain epoch; first, 
persons are simply objects, parts of the material going on to 
be presented, mainly sensations which stand out strong, etc. ; 
second, persons are very peculiar objects, very interesting, 
very active, very arbitrary, very portentous of pleasure or 
pain. If we consider these objects as fully presented, i.e. 
as in due relationship to one another in space, projected out, 
and thought of as external, and call such objects again 
projects, then persons at this stage may be called personal 
projects. They have certain peculiarities afterwards found by 
the child to be the attributes of personality; third, his own 
actions issuing from himself, largely by imitation, as we shall 
see, in response to the requirements of this 'projective' 
environment, having his own organism as their centre and his 
own consciousness as their theatre, give him light on himself 
as subject; and, fourth, this light upon himself is reflected 
upon other persons to illuminate them as also subjects, and 
they to him then become ejects or social fellows. 

I insist upon this series of distinctions here, even though 
it be necessary to refer the reader ahead in my text for further 
justification of them; since it is the fundamental disregard 
of them which has vitiated much of the earlier work in infant 
and social psychology. The familiar 'psychologist's fallacy,' 
a fallacy which is so easy a refuge for inadequate insight, 
and so ready a screen for faulty analysis, will be perma- 
nently exposed only by the adoption of terms which forbid 
appeal to it. If by 'project' of persons we understand the 
infant's consciousness of others before he is conscious of 
c 



1 8 Infant and Race Psychology 

himself, by 'subject' his consciousness of himself, and by 
'eject,' as Clifford suggested, his consciousness of other 
persons as similar to himself, we have, I think, safer terms 
than before, and, at the same time, full opportunity to define 
the content of each as the facts may require. 

The parallelism with animal development is quite clear 
from this new point of approach. The only stage for which 
an evident analogy has not been pointed out by other writers 
is that called 'projective.' Now in the fact of herding, 
common life and arrangements for the protection of the 
herd, animal societies of various kinds, animal division of 
labour, etc., — whatever be the origin of it, — we have 
what seems to be such an epoch in animal life. These 
creatures show a real recognition of one individual by another, 
and a real community of life and reaction, which is quite 
different from the individualism of a purely sensational and 
unsocial consciousness. And yet it is just as different from 
the reflective organization of human society, in which the 
self-consciousness and personal volition of the individual 
play the most important role. 1 I see no way of accounting for 
the gregarious instinct anywhere, except on the assumption of 
such an epoch of animal consciousness. 

We thus reach what I think is a valuable distinction in 
the interpretation of animal action, and avoid what has 
been a repetition of the 'psychologist's fallacy' habitual 
with naturalists. It is just as great a mistake to account for 
human society in terms of the gregarious instinct of animals, 
however we may account for this instinct, as it is to explain 
human reflective altruism by the organic sympathy of the 
lioness with her cub. In each of these cases we are antici- 
pating a later stage of a single process of growth, because, 

1 The 'social' life of certain of the hymenoptera, notably bees and ants, 
illustrates an extreme 'projective' social development embodied in instinct. 



Variations in Ontogeny 19 

being at this later stage ourselves, we are able to anticipate 
it ; and by thus levelling the higher down to the lower, we are 
failing to recognize the essential process by which, and by 
which alone, all through the whole organic evolution, higher 
functional forms are reached by development from lower. 

§ 4. Variations in Ontogeny 

Even in the great darkness which obscures the relation 
of race to individual development, two modifications seem 
plainly necessary of the common biological theory of Reca- 
pitulation, according to which there is a strict parallel 
between them. 1 

I. The continued application of the principles of organic 
Habit and Accommodation, with the perpetuation of their 
results either by natural selection alone or with the inheritance 
of characters acquired by individual creatures, leads to certain 
organic ' short-cuts ' — the omission in future descendants of 
certain elements or stages which were necessary in the prog- 
ress of their ancestors. 

Let us look first at Habit, and put the case, at the outset, 
abstractly. A particular function involving elements a, b, c, 
etc., in a dog, for example, may, by the habitual exercise of 
this function, in later modes of life and different environ- 
ment, come to involve only the elements a, c, etc. This is 
actually seen in well-known examples, such as the difference 
between dogs, together with rabbits and lower creatures 

1 See also Chap. XVI., § 4, below. Perhaps the best and most readable 
statement of the present standing of the theory of ' Recapitulation ' is the late 
Professor A. M. Marshall's President's Address before the British Association 
at Leeds in 1890, reprinted as Chap. XIII., 'The Recapitulation Theory,' in 
Marshall's Biological Lectures and Addresses (1894). The names associated 
with the theory are Ernst von Baer, Louis Agassiz, Fritz Miiller, Haeckel, and 
Balfour. The standing of the theory is not materially changed to-day (1906). 



20 Infant and Race Psychology 

generally, on one side, and monkeys and men on the other 
side, in regard to certain sense functions. If the cortical 
centre for sight be extirpated in a dog, he becomes tempo- 
rarily blind, recovering his sight after some days by what is 
supposed to be the reinstatement of a lower centre in the 
function which belonged to it in ancestral forms ; this lower 
centre is the b of the a, b, c series. But when monkeys or 
men lose their sight by reason of a lesion of the cortical centre 
for vision in the occipital lobe they never recover it. In this 
case the lower centre has lost its ability to constitute itself a 
sight centre, — it is no longer necessary as a term in the series 
of organs involved in the function, — and a, c, etc., represents 
the series. This 'short-cut' is inherited or selected and so 
represents a departure from phylogeny. As I have said 
elsewhere: "In organisms in which the reflex reactions pre- 
dominate, in which the 'downward' growth has led to the 
consolidation of the greater part of the system in ganglionic 
centres, we would expect that the higher functions, the 
centres for complex delicate movements, would be more 
dependent and unformed. Consequently, when they are 
interfered with, the ganglionic centres, being still in close 
anatomical connection with them, would regain the function 
which they formerly performed. Thus sensori-motor gangli- 
onic connections which have fallen into disuse through the 
growth of higher centres recover their lost activity under the 
stimulus of a serious and dangerous lesion. It is nothing 
more than a reversion of function by a reverse process of 
adaptation. On the other hand, in the case of man, the law 
of 'upward' growth has reached its fullest application; the 
cortical centres have become independent of their ganglionic 
confreres, and, in the loss of the former an irreparable damage 
is sustained. In this latter case, it is a general in the army 
who has fallen, and no subordinate officer can fill his place ; 



Variations in Ontogeny 21 

in the former case, it is a captain that is lost and his lieutenant 
is easily promoted." 1 

Referring to this hypothesis which I have called the : short- 
cut' theory, in its application to muscular movement, the 
application which has especial interest for us later on, Foster 
says: 2 "It is possible to maintain the thesis that man has 
become so developed as to his nervous system and the motor 
cortex, so accustomed to make use exclusively of the pyramidal 
system, that the will has lost the power, still possessed by the 
lower animals, to gain access, by some path other than the 
pyramidal one, to the immediate nervous mechanisms of 
thought." 

The practical result, in the case of this particular illustra- 
tion, which recurs in our later discussion, 3 may be put very 
briefly thus: it is possible that animals may perform move- 
ments which seem to be voluntary, with a nervous apparatus 
which would be inadequate to their voluntary performance by 
the child or the man. 4 And this is to say that man in his 
individual development does not pass through the stage rep- 
resented by the animal's performance of this function with 
this apparatus. 

In the fact of Accommodation or adaptation, we find a 
similar influence at work to modify the strict parallel required 
by the theory of Recapitulation. By accommodation, with 
the new adaptations which it works, old habits are broken up, 
and new co-ordinations are made, which are more complex, 
or new organic growths secured, which simplify a function. 
These gains are again clinched by heredity or selection and 

1 Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II., p. 46. 

2 Textbook of Physiology, 5th ed., III., p. 1062. 

3 Below, Chap. XIII. 

4 I have, in reference to this formulation, the opinion of Professor H. F. 
Osborn, that ' this is probably supported by the comparative anatomy of the 
cortex.' 



22 Infant and Race Psychology 

constitute further variations from phytogeny. This is 
particularly evident in volition. Foster again notes this in 
the quotation which follows, citing the same structure as in 
the earlier quotation, the pyramidal tracts. He does not 
appear to see the application of the two opposite principles 
which I have mentioned, however; for he does not make it 
clear that in one case, the latter, he is dealing with the question 
of the origin of the pyramidal tracts by new adaptations, and 
in the other, with the organic fixing of these tracts for pur- 
poses of voluntary movement. He says : * " When we pass in 
review a series of brains from the lower to the higher, and see 
how the pyramidal system is, so to speak, grafted on to the 
rest of the brain, when we observe how the increasing differen- 
tiation of the motor cortex runs parallel to the increasing 
possession of skilled, educated movements, we may perhaps 
suppose that 'a short-cut' from the cortex to the origins of 
the several motor nerves, such as is afforded by the pyramidal 
fibres, from the advantages it offers to the more primitive 
path from segment to segment along the cerebro-spinal axis, 
has by natural selection been developed into being in man 
the chief and most important instrument for carrying out 
voluntary movements." 

This influence of Accommodation means, therefore, in 
this particular case, that animals may have nervous apparatus 
strikingly similar to that of man in many of its parts and still 
not be able to perform the functions which are performed by 
those parts in man. And the reason of it is, again, that man 
has got a certain apparatus set aside for a higher function 
without first using it for the lower function for which the 
animal used it. In this again, we must recognize departure 
from strict Recapitulation. 

The degree to which a simple structural device may pre- 

1 Loc. cit., p. 1063. 



Variations in Ontogeny 23 

serve its type of action while adapting itself to new conditions, 
and assuming functions which, so far as their value, end, and 
conscious character are concerned, are new — this is simply 
extraordinary. And all the more so when we go to conscious- 
ness for the criterion of difference in function. I shall 
illustrate this further in what I call the principle of 'lapsed 
links' in the discussion of imitation below, and also in con- 
nection with the theory of the genesis of emotional expression. 1 
The self -repeating or 'circular' reaction, to which the name 
'organic imitation' is given in the later pages, is seen to be 
fundamental and to remain the same, as far as structure is 
concerned, for all motor activity whatever: the only differ- 
ence between higher and lower function being, that in the 
higher, certain accumulated adaptations have in time so 
come to overlie the original reaction, that the conscious 
state which accompanies it seems to differ per se from the 
crude imitative consciousness in which it had its beginning. 

These positions, it is clear, suggest modifications of that 
doctrine of ontogenesis which holds that it closely epitomizes 
phylogenesis. It is evident that while the organism develops 
serially in regular stages, yet often the stages in « the indi- 
vidual's growth represent directly later stages in the series of 
animal structures, without having passed through all the 
earlier stages. 2 To use the same example, which is apropos 
to our later topics, we could not hold that the infant first gets 
voluntary movement by using the intra-segmental pathways, 
and then later, by developing the pyramidal tracts and their 
connections, transfers its voluntary function to these. Yet 
this latter has been, probably, the course of phylogenesis. 

1 Chap. X., § 2, for the first reference and Chap. VIII., § 4, for the 
second. 

2 Professor C. S. Minot thinks this is the case with structures, the material 
going directly to make up later organs. 'For example,' he says, 'the gill- 
arches make the branchian apparatus in fishes, but the neck in man.' 



24 Infant and Race Psychology 

On the contrary, we find that the infant does not act volun- 
tarily at all until he acts via the pyramidal tracts and their 
central connections. The stage of intra-segmental voluntary 
action which, if it exists, represents in certain animals a 
stage of development, is lacking altogether in the ontogenetic 
series. 1 

Similarly, we find a remarkable illustration on the side of 
Accommodation. On the strict interpretation of the doctrine 
of Recapitulation we should find the child first passing through 
a stage of very varied and admirable instinctive adjustments, 

— corresponding to the instinctive equipment of the brutes, 

— and then later losing these instincts when it learns to act 
voluntarily. But the child shows nothing of the kind. We 
find instead that he passes directly from the suggestive, 
sensori-motor, stage, which is much lower and earlier in the 
phylogenetic series than the extreme instinctive stage, directly 
to the volitional stage. He accomplishes this by direct in- 
heritance of the highly differentiated organism which has 
arisen through the exercise of conscious mental selection with 
heredity or through natural selection, 2 and so omits, in his 
individual development, a great mass of phylogenetic details. 

1 Cf. Edinger's account of the fcetal and early development of the pyra- 
midal tracts in his Structure of the Central Nervous System. 

2 It will have been noticed that in using the phrase 'heredity, or natural 
selection,' I offer either of the current biological views of heredity. I do 
not think the current controversy over 'acquired characters' is pertinent to 
this topic: for Weismann's supplementary hypotheses in support of neo- 
Darwinism are so evidently framed to reinstate all the explanations of the 
doctrine of use with heredity, that it makes little difference which side is 
right. If the effects of experience are preserved sufficiently to secure evolu- 
tion, as we find it, it becomes an extremely interesting biological problem 
to be sure, but not a matter of much philosophical importance whether the 
method is use with heredity or variation with selection. See further dis- 
cussion below, Chap. VII., § 3. The writer's own theory of 'Organic 
Selection' — a form of Darwinism — is presented in detail in the volume 
Development and Evolution (1902). 



Variations in Ontogeny 25 

The probability of such a modification of the doctrine of 
ontogenesis occurs to us also in a later connection as a corol- 
lary from the psychological theory of Habit. 1 The question 
is raised whether the effects of habit, itself a phenomenon of 
development, would not be inherited, or selected, thus ab- 
breviating the ontogenetic process. A child, for example, by 
possessing a direct tendency to respond to a visual stimulus 
with movements of the tongue and larynx, would be saved 
the long course of development which has been necessary 
phylogenetically for the establishing of the direct connection, 
now very generally held to exist, between the visual and 
motor-speech centres, with a corresponding saving on the 
mental side. A striking illustration is seen, also, in the 
infant's behaviour in regard to space. A strict reproduction 
of the phylogenetic order would require that the child should 
first see the spatial dimensions with all the exactitude of the 
young of some of the animals, and then afterwards develop 
the apparatus for learning space properties by a very gradual 
experience, at the same time losing the former apparatus and 
with it his instinctive knowledge of space. 

These considerations also seem, from the psychological 
side, to support the general theory of 'race experience' as 
held by the evolutionists of both schools. The whole ten- 
dency of current psychology is toward a functional view of 
experience, i.e. toward the view that memory is a form of 
mental reinstatement or habit, that character is disposition 
for action, that the brain develops by enlargement of function 
on the basis of earlier function, and that the mind proceeds 
upon its past, even when it does not know its indebtedness. 
The value of ancestral experience is seen in what it makes 
me to be for opinion and action now — by whatever process 
it may have come down from my father to myself. 
1 Below, Chap. XVI., §§ 2, 3. 



26 Infant and Race Psychology 

Now this is what evolution claims for race experience. It 
says what is present in the mind now, in the way of function, 
is due somehow to the past. Nervous inheritance provides 
for the apparatus, and mental inheritance sums up the ex- 
perience. Hence if individual mental development does not 
epitomize race development and yet it be true that man has 
developed, then the 'race experience hypothesis' becomes 
absolutely essential to genetic psychology, just as animal 
physiology would be the main resource of human morphology 
if the animal embryos did not show Recapitulation. 1 

The probabilities point, therefore, from the side of the 
phylogenesis of mind to very marked modifications of the 
race record in the growth of the individual. They may 
finally have to be stated even more strongly than the purely 
nervous ones are stated, e.g. by Balfour, who says: "The 
time and sequence of the development of parts is often 
modified, and finally secondary structural features make their 
appearance to fit the embryo or larva for special conditions 
of existence. . . . Like the scholar with his manuscript, the 
embryologist has by a process of careful and critical examina- 
tion to determine where the gaps are present, to detect the 
later insertions, and to place in order what has been mis- 
placed "; 2 and by Marshall: "It is indeed a history, but a 
history of which entire chapters are lost, while in those that 
remain many pages are misplaced and others are so blurred 

1 An interesting line of inquiry has recently been opened up into what is 
known as 'Neuroses of Development' (cf. Clouston's book with that title) 
i.e. the nervous conditions which arise from the fact of development itself. 
These states arise at the crises, bridges, 'short-cuts,' in the individual's de- 
velopment; such as the preliminaries of puberty, which probably represent 
a great series of phylogenetic changes. The theory of ' race experience ' as 
social — not physical — heredity is worked out in Social and Ethical Inter- 
pretations, Chap. II. 

2 Comparative Embryology, p. 3. 



Variations in Ontogeny 27 

as to be illegible . . . and worse still, alterations or spurious 
additions have been freely introduced by later hands, and at 
times so cunningly as to defy detection." 

II. The second great consideration pertains to the period 
of infancy, using the term 'infancy' to cover the entire period 
of an organism's life from germination to independent exist- 
ence with power to support life alone. 

The bearing of the length of the extra-uterine period of 
infancy — the usual meaning of the term — upon the develop- 
ment of the creature has been shown by Fiske and others to 
be highly important. Children are, during their long in- 
fancy, given parental care and artificial protection, and so 
enabled to develop slowly to maturity, with all the practice 
in the acquisition of movements and in general adaptation to 
artificial conditions of living, etc., which the human intel- 
lectual and social environment of the adult demands. A 
long infancy period is accordingly necessary to his being a 
man ; the child must have time, nourishment and protection 
during the time, and finally instruction. 

Biologists are now recognizing a corresponding group of 
modifying circumstances brought to bear also during the 
prenatal period, which is simply an earlier stage of infancy. 
The course of development of the embryo is dependent upon 
the presence and amount of food, called 'food-yolk,' which 
the egg supplies. A principle has been formulated which 
connects the ontogenetic stages of growth directly with the 
food-yolk supply, i.e. a plentiful supply of food-yolk tends 
to a direct development toward maturity, to the abbreviation, 
consequently, of the recapitulation process, and to the birth 
of the creature ready formed for separate and independent 
existence. 1 

1 See Marshall's discussion of the influence of the food-yolk supply, Bio- 
logical Lectures, XIII. 



28 Infant and Race Psychology 

In this matter of the interpretation of the whole infancy 
period, including both prenatal and postnatal infancy, how- 
ever, there seem to be two influences at work which tend to 
opposite results. We have seen that abundant food supply 
in the conditions of embryonic or prenatal life tends to swift 
development and developmental abbreviation. The new- 
born animal is soon fitted, under these conditions, for in- 
dependent life on a comparatively high level of competition. 
This shortness of the embryonic period seems to be in direct 
relation to the shortness or entire absence of the postnatal 
infancy period. Being thus fitted to take care of himself by 
advanced uterine development, he does not need after birth 
the artificial care, protection, etc., of other infants. 

On the other hand, where we find a long postnatal infancy 
period, as in the case of the child, we find also a long 
antecedent embryo period, in spite of the abundant food 
supply afforded by the placental method of uterine nourish- 
ment. 

The difference in the two cases seems to find some explana- 
tion when we look at the nature of the mental endowment 
secured in each case respectively. In the former case — 
that of swift intra-uterine preparation for immediate, in- 
dependent life — the goal is refined and varied instinct, a 
matter of organic structure secured by earlier phylogenetic 
development: so the pathway of progress is already well 
trodden and the young organism has a straight road to grow 
along, marked out by its hereditary impulse. So the stretch 
to maturity is made rapidly. 

In the case, however, of long infancy, both before and 
after birth, the mental gifts to be secured are of a kind not 
already crystallized in instinct. The hereditary impulses re- 
quire a long ontogenetic evolution in each individual. So in 
spite of all the favourable conditions of abundant food, free- 



Variations in Ontogeny 29 

dom from disturbing influences, etc., the creature must have 
both one and the other period at its longest. 

The psychological considerations — which I am careful to 
keep to, not making any claim to biological expertness — 
would seem to favour some such formulation as the follow- 
ing: the extra-uterine infancy period is to the intra-uterine 
embryonic period, the conditions being equally favourable, 
as the amount of possible ontogenetic development is to the 
amount of phylogenetic development, in the entire working 
out of the creature's hereditary impulse. For although with 
creatures of instinct, which represent much phylogeny, the 
sum of the two periods is short, still the prenatal infancy 
period is relatively long, while with creatures of intelligence, 
which represent much ontogeny, although their whole period 
is long, yet the prenatal infancy period is relatively short. 1 

Furthermore, a great class of mechanical influences, such 
as external strain and stress, accidents, sudden changes in 
environment, cause modifications of the physiological con- 
ditions, and so also modifications of the stages of growth 
during the whole infancy period. Biologists recognize the 
need of restricting their expectations of recapitulation to cir- 
cumstances in which the physiological conditions have been 
normal. 

The great cause, however, of departures from the series 
demanded by the theory of recapitulation in a given case is 
that which is known in general biology technically as 'for- 
tuitous' or 'spontaneous variation.' The law upon the basis 
of which natural selection gets application in the preservation 
of adult organisms — the law of supply, by which a great 
variety of forms is secured to select from — this law applies 
none the less to immature organisms. Not only do the 

1 That is, both the time ratios and the development ratios are large or 
small together. 



30 Infant and Race Psychology 

fittest adults survive, but also the fittest embryos develop. 
And it is only a further application of the same truth — an 
application recently put in evidence by Weismann {Romanes 
Lecture, Oxford, 1894), under the term ' Intra-Selection ' — 
that single organs of one and the same creature are subject 
to such selection. 1 It is easy then to see that the actual 
course of development of an organism along the line of 
stages marked out by the earlier race development might be 
disturbed at any point by the operation of natural selection. 
For under new conditions an embryo which departs in some 
way from the series demanded by recapitulation may by that 
very fact be fitted to survive, and so be seized upon by natural 
selection. 2 Sedgwick maintains also that variations found in 
adult forms are also reflected in the embryo. He says in the 
paper referred to in the last note (p. 41) : " Variations do 
not merely affect the non-early period of life where they are 
of immediate functional importance to the animal, but, on 
the contrary, they are inherent in the germ and affect more 
or less profoundly the whole of development." 

Coming back to mental development, we should expect to 
find a similar state of things: the recapitulation of mental 
stages in the history of the child should show similar breaks. 
Abundant 'food supply' in the shape of lessons, rich sugges- 

1 Cf. the theory of motor adaptation developed below (Chap. VII.). 

2 This influence of ' variation ' does not seem to have had sufficient empha- 
sis by embryologists ; but see the illustrations of it given by Marshall, who, 
nevertheless, rather leaves it to be assumed than definitely states it. The re- 
cent paper by Sedgwick, Quarterly Journal of Microscopic Science (April, 
1894), endeavours, however, to reconstruct the theory of recapitulation in 
view of the facts of variation. He finds that only those stages of ancestral 
form are preserved in embryos which represent conditions of larval existence 
in the ancestral line, the point being that the independent life of larvae have 
required the full development of organs for actual functions and so secured 
their preservation in the later series of embryonic changes, the change from 
larval to embryonic development being due to variation. 



Variations in Ontogeny 31 

tions in its social and educational life, urging forward in 
tasks of mind, etc., should give precocious mental develop- 
ment in the sense of early maturity of mind. The stages 
normally prescribed for natural growth may thus be abbre- 
viated. The same effect is produced also by accidents of 
environment. Newsboys and street gamins become sharp 
and mentally agile to a phenomenal degree from their method 
of life, while boys reared in the artificial seclusion and soli- 
tude of the single son, educated by a tutor in his father's 
house, show the contrary character. 

The fact of variation, however, should here, as on the 
biological side, have supreme emphasis. No two children 
are alike. This is a commonplace ; but its true meaning is 
not a commonplace. Its meaning is not limited to the fact 
that the child A has a different temperament, different 
tastes, different memory type, etc., from the child B. It 
means further that this difference is the only means to human 
progress, — the only supply of material for the selection of the 
fittest under the action of a progressive social environment. 

I do not care to enlarge here upon the extraordinary 1 
pedagogical aspects of this theme, though they are well 
worth attention. I note it here as a fact important in the 
theory of mental development. If it be a fact, then all 
infant observations should be read in the light of it. No 
child's deeds should be given universal value without a 
critical examination, before which even the most competent 
psychologist might well quail. For how do we know that 
this child has not had artificial rearing so far in its life, how 
know that he has not experienced accidents of environment 
which produce those 'developmental conveniences' of mental 
behaviour which psychologists may recognize as artificial 
short-cuts from one stage of growth to another; how know 

1 See the relative chapters in the writer's Story of the Mind. 



32 Infant and Race Psychology 

that he does but show anachronisms of development forced 
upon him by malformation of brain, body, or limb ? Or is 
he not himself in some important respect — as to filial in- 
stinct, premature sexuality, unusually strong or early thrill of 
nervous emotion, etc. — a variation, for life or for speedy 
death? We do not know. 

If the morphologist, whose specimens are laid out on glass 
and bottled in jars, is confused by the perpetual anomalies of 
recapitulation, which make it necessary for him to arm him- 
self with all the cautions formulated by Balfour, Marshall, 
Adam Sedgwick, 1 and others; then where is the morpholo- 
gist of mind, whose specimens are hidden behind all the 
screens of social convention, maternal pride and tenderness, 
and all the homely realities of ignorant nursery customs? 
All he can get is an occasional snap-shot at a baby. And, 
alas, this is more than most psychologists seem to want ! 

We are obliged, therefore, to modify even further the 
principle which seemed safe in our earlier paragraph, i.e. 
that the order of an infant's stages of development might be 
considered constant. It is only true if we know that the 
'stage' is really a universal and regular stage. To be such 
it must He between two other 'stages' just as universal and 
regular. With this caution we may use the rule with two 
very different degrees of value, according as we are dealing 
with the ontogeny of man or with his phylogeny, — with 
what a human mind goes through from cradle to grave on 
one hand, and with what, on the other hand, we may take 
from this development, as representing the race history of 
man, either the history of the species or the wider reach of 
animal race history. 

For it is clear that the stages of human life history may be 
built up from a wide series of observations of different chil- 

1 In Quarterly Journal of Microscopic Science, April, 1894. 



Variations in Ontogeny 33 

dren under varied conditions. So the embryologists establish 
the ontogeny of a species with great exactness and nicety of 
observation. In this way the widest reports of single ob- 
servers of children get their value — a value for science, and 
especially for education. 

But such a science as comparative mental morphology — ■ 
and even worse, that of mental embryology — is at present 
a chimera. How can we say anything about recapitulation 
when we know so little about mental ontogeny and less, per- 
haps, about comparative mental physiology ? l In popular 
phrase, that is: how can we compare the development of 
the infant with that of the animal series, when we know 
neither how the child develops nor what is actually taking 
place in his consciousness, in any great detail, at any stage 
to which he may have developed ? 

1 As treated in 'Individual' and 'Class' Psychology. 



CHAPTER II 

A New Method of Child Study 

§ i. Critical 

The current discussions of the more elementary mental 
processes show that we lack clearness in our conceptions of 
the earlier stages of mental life. This is evident enough to 
call out frequent appeals for 'scientific' child study. The word 
' scientific ' is all right, as far as it goes ; but as soon as we 
come to ask what constitutes scientific child study, and why it 
is that we have so little of it, we find no clear answer ; and 
we go on as before, accepting the same anecdotes of fond 
mothers and repeating the observations of Egger and Max 
Miiller. 1 

Now there are only two ways of studying a child, as of 
studying any other object — observation and experiment. 
But who can observe, and who can experiment? Who can 
look through a telescope and ' observe ' a new satellite ? Only 
a skilful astronomer. Who can hear a patient's hesitating 
speech and 'observe' aphasia? Only a neurologist. Ob- 
servation means the acutest exercise of the discriminating 
faculty of the scientific specialist. And yet many of the 
observations which we have in this field were made by the 
average mother, who knows less about the human body than 
she does about the moon or a wild flower, or by the average 

1 See, for example, the uncriticised anecdotes given in Sully's Studies in 
Childhood. 

34 



Critical 35 

father, who sees his child for an hour a day, when the boy 
is dressed up, and who has never slept in the same room 
with him in his life; by people who have never heard the 
distinction between reflex and voluntary action, or that be- 
tween nervous adaptation and conscious selection. Only the 
psychologist can ' observe ' the child, and he must be so 
saturated with his information and his observations that the 
conduct of the child becomes instinct with meaning for the 
theories of mind and body. 

It is evident, however, that all faithful recording is of im- 
portance, and that this may be done by all those who can be 
thoroughly objective and unprejudiced in the presence of 
children. I believe that many parents can do this with very 
great accuracy ; but there remains still the uncertainty, when 
such records are taken up for interpretation, as to whether 
the parent or nurse, in a particular case, has been free from 
the influences of affection, pride, jealousy, etc. On the 
whole, judging from the records in this branch of psychology, 
the science would better wait till its competent workers 
realize their opportunities and seriously study the children 
for themselves. 

And as for ' experiment,' greater still is the need. Many a 
thing a child is said to do, a little judicious experimenting — 
a little arrangement of the essential requirements of the act 
in question — shows it is altogether incapable of doing. 
But to do this we must have our theories, and have our 
critical moulds arranged beforehand. That most vicious 
and Philistine attempt in some quarters to put science in the 
strait-jacket of barren observation, to draw the life-blood of 
all science — speculative advance into the meaning of things 
— this ultra-positivistic cry has come here as everywhere else, 
and put a ban upon theory. On the contrary, give us theories, 
theories, always theories ! Let every man who has a theory 



36 A New Method of Child Study 

pronounce his theory! This is just the difference between 
the average mother and the good psychologist — she has no 
theories, he has; he has no interests, she has. She may 
bring up a family of a dozen and not be able to make a 
single trustworthy observation; he may be able, from one 
sound of one yearling, to confirm theories of the neurologist 
and educator, which are momentous for the future training 
and welfare of the child. 

In the matter of experimenting with children, therefore, 
our theories must guide our work — guide it into channels 
which are safe for the growth of the child, stimulating to his 
powers, definite and enlightening in the outcome. All this was 
largely lacking, until recently, both in 'child psychology' 
and in applied pedagogy. The implications of physiological 
and mental are so close in infancy, the mere animal can do 
so much to ape reason, and the rational is so helpless under 
the leading of instinct, impulse, and external necessity, that 
the task is excessively difficult — to say nothing of the 
extreme delicacy and tenderness of the budding tendrils of 
the mind. Experiment? Every time we send a child out of 
the home to the school, we subject him to experiment of the 
most serious and alarming kind. He goes to a teacher who 
may perchance be not only not wise unto the child's sal- 
vation, but on the contrary a machine for administering a 
single experiment to an infinite variety of children. It is 
highly probable that two in every three children are more 
or less damaged or hindered in their mental and moral 
development in the school ; but I am not at all sure that they 
would fare any better if they stayed at home ! The children 
are experimented with so much and so unwisely, in any case, 
that it is possible that a little intentional experiment, guided 
by real insight and psychological information, would do them 
good. 



Critical 2>7 

With this preamble, I wish to call attention to a possible 
method of experimenting with children. 1 In endeavoring 
to bring questions like the degree of memory, recognition, 
association, etc., present in an infant, to a practical test, 
considerable embarrassment has always been experienced in 
construing the child's responses safely. Of course the only 
way a child's mind can be studied is through its expression 
— facial, lingual, vocal, muscular ; and the first question, i.e. 
What did the infant do? must be followed by a second, 
i.e. What did his doing that mean ? And the second question 
is, as I have said, the harder question, and the one which 
requires more knowledge and insight. It is evident, on the 
surface, that the farther away we get in the child's life from 
simple inherited or reflex responses, the more complicated 
do the responsive processes become, and the greater becomes 
the difficulty of analyzing them, and arriving at a true pic- 
ture of the real mental condition which lies back of them. 

To illustrate this confusion, I may cite about the one 
problem which psychologists have attempted to solve by ex- 
periments on children: the determination of the order of 
rise of the child's perceptions of the different qualities of 
colour. Preyer starts by showing a child, among other 
methods, various colours and requiring the child to name 
them, the results being expressed in percentages of true 
answers to the whole number. Now this experiment involves 
no less than four different questions, and the results give 
absolutely no clue to their analysis. It involves: i. The 
child's distinguishing of different colours simultaneously dis- 
played before it, i.e. the complete development of the child's 
colour sensation apparatus; 2. The child's ability to recog- 

1 My first discussion of it was in Science, New York, April 21, 1893. 
The work of Warner, The Development of Mental Faculty, also proceeds 
upon the study of movement. 



38 A New Method of Child Study 

nize or identify a colour after having seen it once; 3. An 
association between the child's colour-seeing and word hear- 
ing and speaking memories, by which the name is brought up ; 
4. Equally ready facility in the pronunciation of the various 
colour names which the child recognizes: and there is the 
further embarrassment, that any such process which involves 
association, is as varied as the lives of children. The single 
fact that speech is acquired long after objects and some 
colours are distinguished, shows that such results are worth- 
less as far as the problem of colour perception is concerned. 

That the fourth element pointed out above is a real source 
of confusion is shown by the fact that children recognize 
many words which they cannot pronounce readily. This 
represents the second phase in the development of this ex- 
perimental problem. Another method used by Preyer and 
Binet avoids this difficulty. The experimenter varied the 
conditions by naming a colour and then requiring the child 
to pick out the corresponding colour. This gave results 
different from those of the first method. For example, 
Preyer's child identified yellow better than any other colour, 
a result which no one has confirmed ; it is negatived by the 
results of Garbini {Arch, per VAnihrop. e PEtnoL, XXIV., 
1894, Nos. 1, 2). 

The further objection that colours might be distinguished 
before the word-association is established at all, or that 
colour- words might be interchanged or confused by the child, 1 
is also seen by Binet, 2 and his attempt to eliminate that source 
of error constitutes what we may call the third stage in the 

1 A good instance of such confusion, between red and blue, and its correct 
interpretation, is given by Miss Shinn, Notes on the Development of a Child, 
Part I., pp. 38 and 50. 

2 Professor Preyer later wrote me, that he also saw this in 1882; but his 
experiments appear of doubtful success (see Mind of the Child, English 
translation, Pt. L, pp. 11, 15, 19). 



Critical 39 

statement of the problem. He adopts the methode de recon- 
naissance as preferable to the methode d' 'appellation. This 
consisted, in his experiments, in showing to a child a coloured 
counter, and then asking the child to pick out the same 
colour from a number of different coloured counters. 

This reduces the question to the second of the four I have 
named above. It is the usual method of testing for colour- 
blindness. It answers very well for colour-blindness; for 
what we really want to learn in the case of a sailor or a 
signalman is whether he can recognize a determined colour 
when it is repeated ; that is, does he know green or red to be 
the same as his former experience of green or red? But it 
is evident that there is still a more fundamental question in 
the matter — the real question of colour perception. It is 
quite possible a child might not recognize an isolated colour 
quality when he could really very well distinguish colour quali- 
ties side by side. It is the question just now coming to the 
front, the question of absolute vs. relative recognition, or 
immediate vs. mediate recognition. 1 The last question is 
this : When does the child get the different colour sensations 
(not recognitions), and in what order? 

A further point of criticism of Binet's results serves to 
illustrate my argument. Binet rules out the influence of the 
word memories which embarrassed Preyer's results, by his 
methode de reconnaissance. The child recognizes again the 
colour just seen. Now those who have followed the course 
of recent discussions of recognition will remember that the 
mediation of word-associations is not ruled out in these cases 
in children of three to five years old or even younger. Leh- 
mann finds coloured wools are recognized when the colours 
are those whose names are known (Benennungsassociation) } 

1 See the discussion of the question of tone recognition, below, Chap. 
XIV., § 3. 



40 A New Method of Child Study 

and that shades which have not peculiar names, or whose 
names are not known, are not recognized. Others have 
held that an unobserved or unintelligible element — a 
Nebenvorstellung — may serve as the link of recognition 
without rising again to clear consciousness a second time. It 
is, of course, useless, if these results be trustworthy, to attempt 
to get recognitions clear of word memories after colour names 
have once been learned by the child. It would seem that 
the question ought to be taken up with younger children. 
Binet's experiments were in the interval between the child's 
thirty-second and fortieth months. It is perhaps a con- 
firmation of Lehmann's position, that the colours least 
recognized in Binet's list are shades whose names are less 
familiar to children ; his list, in order of certainty of recog- 
nition, is red, blue, green, rose, maroon, violet, and yellow, 
by the methode d' appellation; and, by both methods together, 
red, blue, orange, maroon, rose, violet, green, white, and 
yellow. 1 

§ 2. Expository 

This colour question may suffice to make clear the essen- 
tials of a true experimental method. Only when we catch 
the motor response, or a direct reflex, in its simplicity, is it a 
true index of the sensory stimulus in its simplicity. I have 
accordingly attempted to reach a method of child study of 
such a character as to yield a series of experiments whose 
results would be in terms of the most fundamental motor 
reactions of the infant, which could be easily and pleasantly 
conducted, and which would be of wide application. The 
child's hand movements are, I think, the most nearly ideal 

1 Calculated from Binet's detailed results {Revue Philosophique, 1890, II., 
582 ff.) by Mr. F. Tracy; see his book, The Psychology of Childhood, p. 14, 
and cf. the results of my own experiments below, Chap. IV., § 1. 



Expository 4 1 

in this respect. The hand reflects the first stimulations, the 
most stimulations, and, becoming the most mobile and execu- 
tive organ of volition, attains the most varied and interesting 
offices of utility. We have spontaneous arm and hand move- 
ments, reflex movements, reaching-out movements, grasping 
movements, imitative movements, manipulating movements, 
and voluntary efforts — all these, in order, reflecting the 
development of the mind. The organs of speech are only 
later brought into use, and their use for speech involves an 
already high development of mind, hence the error in many 
results. It has accordingly seemed to me worth while to 
find whether a child's reaching movements would reflect with 
any degree of regularity the modifications of its sensibility, 1 
and, if so, how far this could be made a method of experi- 
menting with young children. 2 

I may adduce one or two considerations which tend to 
show that some such ' dynamogenic ' method is theoretically 
valid. There are some results already recognized in the 
psychology of sense and movement which lend confirmation 
to this idea. The facts that the most motile organs have 
acutest sensibility, notably the hand and fingers; that cer- 
tain marked types of action, such as imitation, arise early in 
connection with the hand ; that the central organic prepara- 
tion for volition is secured first in the arrangements for 
hand movements, 3 — all these facts indicate that the hand 

1 Illustrating 'dynamogenesis,' the general principle that " every stimulus 
has motor force" (see my Handbook of Psychol., Feeling and Will, 
pp. 28, 281). 

2 The suggestion of Mrs. Ladd Franklin {The Psychological Review, L, 
1894, p. 202) is quite in accord with this requirement, i.e. that Sach's dis- 
covery of reflex changes in the width of the pupil when certain colours are 
looked at might be used to test the colour sensations of very young children. 
3 Soltmann ; cf . the chapter below on the ' Origin of Volition,' especially 
pp. 421, 424. 



42 A New Method of Child Study 

movements are the best index of general and special sensi- 
bility in the infant. Fere maintains that sensory stimulations 
of all kinds increase the maximum hand pressure. Colours 
seen have regular, and each its peculiar, effect upon move- 
ment. Tones have similar influence. The ticking of a 
watch is more clearly perceived if movements are made at 
the same time. Further, the reaction-time of hand move- 
ments is shorter if the stimulus (sound, etc.) be more intense. 
There is an enlargement of the hand, through increased blood 
pressure, when a loud sound is heard. The fact of muscle- 
reading, and its experimental demonstration by Gley and 
Jastrow, together with the series of facts shown by recent 
experiments in so-called ' unconscious movements ' by diseased 
patients, 1 — these, and a variety of other facts upon which 
the law of 'dynamogenesis' rests, seem to afford justification 
for the view that the infant's hand movements in reaching 
and grasping are the best index of the kind and intensity of 
its sensory experiences. Magendie 2 long ago suggested 
measuring changes in sensibility by the corresponding changes 
in blood pressure. 

Further, it is not necessary to embarrass ourselves with 
the question whether the hand movements are voluntary 
or not. However we may differ as to the circumstances 
of the rise of volition, it is still true that after its rise the 
child's reactions are for a long time quite under the lead of 
its sensory life. It lives so fully in the immediate present 
and so closely in touch with its environment, that the 
influences which lead to movement can be detected with 
great regularity. In this case the sensations which are 
stimuli to movement become what we may also call '.effort 
stimuli, 7 and the child's efforts with his hands become 
indications of the relative degree of discrimination, attractive- 

1 Binet, Janet. 2 Fere, Sensation et Mouvement, p. 56. 



Expository 43 

ness, etc., of the different sensations which call the efforts 
out. 

Suppose we hang up a piece of meat over Carlo's head and 
tell him to jump for it. His first jump falls short of the 
meat. He jumps again and clears a greater distance. Why 
does he jump farther the second time? Not because he 
argues that a harder jump is necessary to secure the meat ; 
but because by the first jump he got more smell, blood colour, 
and appetite stimulus from the meat. Now suppose it to be 
a red rag instead of meat, and Carlo refuse to jump a second 
time. This is not because he concludes the rag would choke 
him, but because he gets a kind of sensation which takes 
away what appetite stimulus he had before. The thing is a 
thing of sensational dynamogeny of ' suggestion,' and the 
child's state of mind up to his twenty-fourth month, more or 
less, is just about the same. 

The following questions, I think, might be taken up by 
some such method as this : — 

1. The presence of different colour sensations as shown by 
the number and persistence of the child's efforts to grasp the 
colour: the problem of colour perception. 

2. The relative attractiveness of different colours measured 
in the same way : the problems of colour prejerence and dis- 
tinction. 

3. The relative attractiveness of different colour combi- 
nations. 

4. The relative exactness of distance estimation as shown 
by the child's efforts to reach over distances for objects. 

5. The relative attractiveness of different visual out- 
lines (stars, circles, etc.) cut in the same attractive colour, 
etc. 

6. The relative use of right, left, and both hands. 

7. The rise of imitative movements. 



44 A New Method of Child Study 

8. The rise of voluntary movements. 

9. The presence and character of ' accompanying move- 
ments' at different stages of motor development. 

10. The strength of desire and voluntary inhibition as 
shown in the relative persistence of movements of grasping. 

11. The relative strength of disparate sensations at dif- 
ferent periods of child life, as shown by their comparative 
expression in movement. 

12. The inhibiting influence of elementary associations, 
especially pains, punishments, etc. 

I am quite aware of the meagreness of this list; but one 
has only to remember the fact that there is no such thing yet 
as a psycho-physics of the active life, that this side of psy- 
chology is almost terra incognita to the experimentalist. 1 If 
the method prove reliable in one-half of these questions, then 
so much gain. I have applied it to some of them in a more or 
less incomplete way, in the case of my two children, H. and 
E., both girls, with the results recorded in subsequent pages of 
this book. In each case below I take occasion to say to what 
extent the results are of real, or only of methodological, value. 

§ 3. Formula 0} the Dynamo genie Method 

When this method is reduced to its lowest terms, as applied 
to children old enough to reach out for objects which they 

1 I see no reason that a method could not be devised for testing the motive 
influences of presentations of a neutral associational character in terms of the 
time elapsed since their experience. I have announced elsewhere (Proceed- 
ings of Congress for Exper. Psychology, London, 1892) the first results of a 
research conducted upon adults by such a method (see the experiments 
reported below, Chap. XIII., § 4). Professor Miinsterberg has recently sug- 
gested a method of studying the influence of stimulations upon eye move- 
ments, attention, etc., which is also dynamogenic and proceeds upon 
somewhat the same presuppositions (The Psychological Review, I., pp. 441 
ff., September, 1894). 



Formula of the Dynamogenic Method 45 

see, two variable quantities are always involved. The 
reactions will vary in some way with the distance of the 
object exposed, and also in some way with the kind of stim- 
ulus. For example, a child of perhaps eight months of 
age reaches after an orange, when it is eleven inches in front 
of him, with great regularity; but very irregularly, or pos- 
sibly not at all, when it is fourteen inches away. Again, he 
reaches for a colour, red, when perhaps he would not for a 
colourless object. 

If we take the simplest cases — cases in which observa- 
tion shows the responses of the child to be regular, the con- 
ditions of quiet, comfortable position, interest, etc., being 
throughout normal and undisturbed — we may consider 
these two things, quality and distance, as the only important 
variables. By quality is meant the so-called sensational 
character of the stimulating object. If, then, we further 
inquire into the drawing-out influence of various stimula- 
tions, it is evident that it will vary with the quality (q), and, 
in some inverse ratio, with the distance (d). In other words, 
naming the calling-out or dynamogenic influence of a stimu- 
lus D, we have the equation, 

!> = «■$, 
a 

in which k is the sign of proportion. 

I state this formula, not to be mathematical, but simply, 
by ringing the changes possible through substitution of 
values, to illustrate the applications of the method and the 
limits of the general principle of reaction. If q be kept 
constant, experiments will determine the law by which the 
influence of d changes. Again, experiments at different 
ages would show the effect on d of experience in associating 
visual distance with muscular distance. Again, keeping d 



46 A New Method of Child Study 

constant, experiments would show the value of various 
sense qualities, the q values. 

An interesting point emerges when we inquire the effect of 
zero and infinity values. If the child, for example, always 
reaches for a colour at nine inches, this would be practically 
the case of d — o. For, as a matter of fact, distance then 
has no influence ; the whole possible variation in D in suc- 
cessive experiments with different ^'s is due to the #- values 
themselves. It is asked at once" why the influence of d is 
not equally ruled out in any series of experiments in which d 
is kept constant, say at twelve inches. The answer is : be- 
cause in each such series the influence of d changes from the 
fact of practice, habit, and slight fatigue. If the child 
reaches for a blue-*? at twelve inches, and just gets it, he may 
then reach for a green-g with greater avidity at twelve inches 
than he would otherwise have reached for the same green-£ 
at nine inches. So psychology interferes with mathematics. 
The value for d = o, at which we have the purest influence of 
q, is not the least distance possible, but the child's normal 
reaching distance. 

Again, if the child just refrains from reaching for a q at 
fourteen inches, this means practically that d = oo ; that is, 
the influence of d is so all-important that it shuts out all 
relative ^-influences. The distance inhibits movement alto- 
gether. But just here another psychological factor inter- 
feres with the mathematics ; in some cases the inhibition of 
d does not work, and the child oversteps all its experience in 
violent straining and cries. These two so-called psycho- 
logical 'interferences' are referred to again later on, the 
latter being, I think, the main external channel of the rise 
of right- or left-handedness. 1 

These qualifications make it evident that this form of 

1 See below, Chap. IV. 



Formula of the Dynamogenic Method 47 

mathematical statement makes only — what most appeals 
to mathematics in psychology are — an artificial show of 
exactness. This method, like all other psychological methods, 
must be used with a thousand cautions and as many failures ; 
and the last condition of such experiments, as the first condi- 
tion of all work with children, is sympathetic insight into 
their mental movements. Only such sympathy and insight 
can cope with the subtle responses which a wide-awake 
child makes to the most trifling variations in our treatment 
of him. 

I shall now give further facts and experiments illustrating 
the regularity of the child's reactions, and so put in evidence 
the general principle of i dynamogenesis,' upon which all 
motor development, both in the child and in the race, must 
ultimately rest. 



PART I 

EXPERIMENTAL FOUNDATION 

CHAPTER III 

Distance and Colour Perception by Infants 

§ i. Experimental 

The method called ' dynamogenic ' has been explained 
in earlier pages. The application of it to particular ques- 
tions now demands attention, as far as the present writer 
has attempted to apply it. 

It is evident, as was said before in speaking of the infant's 
responses in reaching for objects, that in any particular 
case the element of distance is a variable quantity to be 
considered with the influence of the particular stimulus in 
question. In investigating the infant's colour sensations, 

therefore, we have the formula D = -, in which c denotes 

d 

colour, d, distance, and D, strength of dynamogeny, as already 

explained. 

I undertook at the beginning of my child H.'s ninth month 

to experiment with her with a view to arriving at the exact 

state of her colour perception, employing this new method. 

The arrangements consisted in this instance in giving the 

infant a comfortable sitting posture, kept constant by a band 

passing around her chest and fastened securely to the back 

of her chair. Her arms were left bare and quite free in their 

48 



Experimental 49 

movements. Pieces of paper of different colours were suc- 
cessively exposed, at varying distances, front, right, and left. 
This was regulated by a framework, consisting of a horizontal 
rod graded in inches, projecting from the back of the chair 
at a level with her shoulder and parallel with her arm when 
extended straight forward, and carrying on it another rod, 
also graded in inches, at right angles to the first. This 
second rod was thus a horizontal line directly in front of the 
child, parallel with a line connecting her two shoulders, and 
so equally distant for both hands. This second rod was 
made to slide upon the first, so as to be adjusted at any desir- 
able distance from the child. On this second rod the colours, 
etc., were placed in succession, the object being to excite 
the child to reach for the colour. 

So far from being distasteful to the infant, I found that, 
with pleasant suggestions thrown about the experiments, 
the whole procedure gave her very evident gratification, 
and the affair became one of her pleasant daily occupa- 
tions. After each sitting she was given a reward of some 
kind. 

The accompanying tables give the results, both for colour 
and distance, of 217 experiments. Of these in were with 
five colours and 106 with ordinary newspaper (chosen as a 
relatively neutral object, which would have no colour value 
and no association to the infant). In the tables R stands 
for 'refusal' to reach out for the object, A for 'acceptance' 
with effort, N for the entire number of experiments with 
each colour respectively, and n for the entire number with all 

the colours at each distance respectively. So — = the pro- 

R 

portion of acceptances or efforts for any colour, and - = the 

n 
proportion of refusals for each distance. 



50 Distance and Colour Perception by Infants 



TABLE I 



Distance, 




















Inches 


9 


IO 


II 


12 


13 


14 


15 


Totals. 


Ratio -• 
N 




R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R. A. N. 




Blue 


O— I 


0-4 


o-5 


i-3 


2-4 


l ~5 


3-i 


7-23-30 


.766 


Red 


O— I 


°-3 


2 — 2 


1-4 


1-7 


i-7 


5-i 


IO-25-35 


.714 


White 


o— o 


o— o 


O — O 


0— 1 


°-5. 


1-1 


3-o 


4- 7-" 


.636 


Green 


o— o 


O— I 


O— I 


2—1 


1-4 


1 — 2 


2—0 


6- 9-15 


.60 


Brown 


O— I 


O — 2 


2—1 


3-2 


o-3 


3-i 


2—0 


10—10—20 


•5° 


Totals 


o-3 


O— IO 


4-9 


7-11 


4-23 


7-16 


15-2 


37-74- 1» 


.66 


Ratio - 
n 


o 


O 


•30 


•39 


•15 


•3i 


.88 


Total .33 


11 



TABLE II 



Distance, 
Inches 


9 


IO 


II 


12 


13 


14 


!5 


Totals. 


Ratio — • 

N 




R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R. A. 


R.A. 


R.A. 


R. A. N. 




News- 
paper 

Colour 


0-3 


O— IO 


4-9 


O-17 
7-II 


O-28 
4-23 


i-33 
7 — 16 


25 — 2 
15-2 


26— 80—106 
37- 74-in 


•754 
.666 


Totals 


o-3 


O— IO 


4-9 


7-28 


4-5 1 


8-49 


4O-4 


63-154-217 


•71 


Ratio - 
n 






•3i 


.20 


.07 


.14 


.91 


Total .29 





From these tables we might be able if the experiments 
were of sufficient number and all proper precautions had 



Experimental 5 1 

been taken — on which points the next paragraph may be 
read — to conclude important results for the perception of 
colour and distance. The following inferences, indeed, seem 
to be safely drawn. 

Colour. — The results are evident in the tables (I. and II.), 

A R 

especially the columns marked Ratio _ and Ratio _. 

The colours range themselves in an order of attractiveness, i.e. 
blue, red, white, green, and brown. Disregarding white, the 
difference between blue and red is very slight compared to 
that between any other two. This confirms Binet as against 
Preyer, who puts blue last, and also fails to confirm Preyer 
in putting brown before red and green. Brown to my 
child — as tested in this way — seemed to be about as 
neutral as could well be. A similar distaste for brown was 
noticed in the child observed by Miss Shinn. 1 White, on 
the other hand, was more attractive than green and slightly 
more so than red. I am sorry that my list does not include 
yellow. The newspaper was, at reaching distances up to 
14 inches, as attractive as any of the colours, and even more 
so; but this is probably due to the. fact that the newspaper 
experiments came after a good deal of practice in reaching 
after colours, and a more exact association between the stimu- 
lus and its distance; an influence which I have remarked 
upon in the general discussion, above, 1 of the formula for 
the method. At 15 inches and over, accordingly, the news- 
paper was refused in more than 93 per cent of the cases, while 
blue was refused at that distance in only 75 per cent, and red 
in 83 per cent. 

Distance? — In regard to the question of distance, the 
child persistently refused to reach for anything put 16 inches 
or more away from her. At 15 inches she refused 91 per 

1 Loc. cit., p. 47. * See also the remarks in Chap. IV., § 2. 



52 Distance and Colour Perception by Infants 

cent of all the cases, 90 per cent of the colour cases, and, 
as I have said, 93 per cent of the newspaper cases. At nearer 
distances we find the remarkable uniformity with which the 
saje-distance association works at this early age. At 14 
inches only 14 per cent of all the cases were refused, and at 
13 inches only about 7 per cent. The fact that there was a 
larger percentage of refusals at 10 and 12 inches than at 
13 and 14 inches, is seen from the table (I.) to be due to the 
influence of the brown, which was refused consistently when 
more than 10 inches away. The fact that there were no 
refusals to reach for anything exposed within reaching dis- 
tance (10 inches) — other attractive objects being kept away 
— shows two things: (1) the very fine estimation visually 
of the distance represented by the arm length, thus em- 
phasizing the element of muscular sensations of arm move- 
ment in the perception of distance generally; and (2) the 
great uniformity at this age of the phenomenon of ' sensori- 
motor suggestion ' * upon which this method of child study is 
based. In respect to the first point, it will be remembered 
that the child does not begin to reach for anything that it 
sees until the fourth or sixth week ; so it is evident at what a 
remarkably fast rate this association is formed between arm 
movements and those obscure factors of size, perspective, light 
and shade, etc., which signify distance to the eye ; in such a 
way that the inhibition of arm movement by sensations 
from the other sense, vision, is secured so early. 

In regard to the relative use of the two hands in these 
and other experiments, — this is a topic to which I may 
devote the next brief chapter. 2 

1 See below, Chap. VI., § 3. 

2 Many of the results of these experiments have been confirmed by Mr. 
R. E. Marsden (see his papers in The Psychological Review, 1903, pp. 37, 
297), using the same method. 



Critical 53 



§ 2. Critical 

It is in place to recall the criticisms already offered * upon 
the colour experiments of Preyer and Binet. I think the 
method thus applied successfully obviates many of the 
difficulties of earlier methods. There are certain other 
requirements of proper procedure, however, which, so far as 
I am aware, have never been duly weighed by those who 
have experimented with young children. 

In the first place, fatigue is a matter of considerable im- 
portance, not only on this method but on any other. Again, 
the child is peculiarly susceptible to the appeals of change, 
novelty, chance, or happy suggestion; and often the failure 
to respond to a stimulus is due to distraction or to discomfort 
rather than to lack of intrinsic interesting quality. In re- 
spect to fatigue, I would say that the first signs of restlessness, 
or arbitrary loss of interest, in a series of stimulations, is 
sufficient warning, and all attempts at further experimenting 
should cease. Often the child is in a state of indisposition, 
of trifling nervous irritability, etc.; this should be detected 
beforehand and then nothing should be undertaken. No 
series longer than three trials should be attempted without 
changing the child's position, resting its attention with a song 
or a game, etc., and thus leading it fresh to its 'task' again. 
Further, no single stimulus, as a colour, should be twice 
repeated without a change to some other; since the child's 
eagerness or alertness is somewhat satisfied by the first effort 
and a new thing is necessary to bring him out to full exercise 
again. Further, after each effort or two the child should be 
given the object reached for to hold or play with for a moment ; 
otherwise he grows to apprehend that the whole affair is a 

1 Above, Chap. II., § i. 



54 Distance and Colour Perception by Infants 

case of Tantalus. In all these matters, very much depends 
upon the knowledge and care of the experimenter, and his 
ability to keep the child in a normal condition of pleasurable 
muscular exercise throughout. 1 

Coming to colour experiments, several requirements 
would appear to be necessary for exact results. Should not 
the colours chosen be equal in purity, intensity, lustre, 
illumination, etc.? In reference to these qualitative dif- 
ferences, — those which are really important in order to 
keep our symbol constant as respects all but the qualitative 
colour influence, — I think only that degree of care need be 
exercised which good comparative judgment provides. Colours 
of about equal objective intensity, of no gloss, of relatively 
evident spectral purity, under constant illumination, — this 
is all that is required ; for the variations due to the grosser 
influences I have mentioned, such as condition of attention, 
physical unrest, disturbing noises, sights, etc., are of greater 
influence than any of these more recondite objective variations 
in the stimulus. Intensity and lustre, however, are certainly 
important. It is possible, by carefully choosing a room of 
pretty constant daylight illumination, and setting the experi- 
ments at the same hour each day, to secure a regular degree 
of brightness if the colours themselves are equally bright; 
and lustre may be ruled out by using coloured wools or blot- 
ting-papers. The papers used by myself were coloured 
blotting-papers, which I selected by their empirical proper- 
ties as good for the purpose. The omission of yellow is due 
to the absence, in my neighbourhood, of a yellow paper that 
satisfied me. I did not care to introduce another element of 

1 It is on account of my extreme care in these points that the number of 
experiments recorded in the tables in this chapter is so small ; as it was, they 
extended over a period of more than six months. I was then obliged to 
separate myself from the child, and so the series came to an end. 



Critical 55 

uncertainty in the way of change of texture or general charac- 
ter as to shape, form, etc., as an altogether different object 
would have done. 

The most valid criticism, therefore, on the tables is that 
which exposes the small number of experiments; and an 
examination of the table proves it well taken. It has been 
suggested to me by a friend 1 that the results at n, 12, 13, 
and 14 inches might be taken together for each colour; 
since the element of distance would not give important 
variations within these limits. This, it will be seen, how- 
ever, on calculation, does not alter the order of colour prefer- 
ence, except to lay more emphasis on white. 

On the whole, therefore, I attach some little importance 2 
to the experiments apart from their illustrative value and 
their possible stimulating effect upon others who may care 
to extend them. Their main purpose in the progress and 
plan of this book is seen in their witness to the regularity of 
operation of the principle of suggestion or dynamogenesis. 

1 Mrs. C. Ladd Franklin, who wrote to me kindly about the papers as 
originally published in Science. 

2 For example, Preyer's contention (repeated in his 4th ed., p. 14), that 
the child has no colour 'distinctions' in his first two years, is disproved by 
these results, which indicate different colour perceptions in and after the 
ninth month. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Origin of Right-handedness 

§ i. Experimental 

The question 'Why are we right- or left-handed ?' has 
exercised the speculative ingenuity of many men. It has 
come to the front anew in recent years, in view of the ad- 
vances made in the general physiology of the nervous system ; 
and certainly we are now in a better position to set the problem 
intelligently and to hope for its solution. Hitherto the actual 
conditions of the rise of 'dextrality' in young children — as 
the general fact of uneven-handedness may be called — 
have not been closely observed. It was to gain light, there- 
fore, upon the facts themselves that the experiments described 
in the following pages were carried out. 

My child H. was placed in a comfortable sitting posture, 
the arms left bare and free in their movement, and allowed 
to reach for objects placed before her in positions exactly 
determined and recorded by the simple arrangement of slid- 
ing rods already described. The experiments took place at 
the same hour daily, for a period extending from her fourth 
to her tenth month. These experiments were planned with 
very great care and with especial view to the testing of several 
hypotheses which, although superficial to those who have 
studied physiology, yet constantly recur in publications on 
this subject. 1 Among these theories certain may be men- 

1 Cf. Vierordt's remarks, Physiologie des Kindesalters, pp. 428, 429. For 
a detailed statement of theories on this topic, see Chap. X. of the very learned 

56 



Experimental 5 7 

tioned with regard to which my experiments were con- 
clusive. It has frequently been held that a child's right- 
handedness arises from the nurse's or mother's constant 
method of carrying it; the child's hand which is left free 
being more exercised, and so becoming stronger. This 
theory is ambiguous as regards both mother and child. 
The mother, if right-handed, would carry the child on the 
left arm, in order to work with the right arm. This I find 
an invariable tendency with myself and with nurses and 
mothers whom I have observed. But this would leave the 
child's left arm free, and so a right-handed mother would 
be found with a left-handed child. Again, if the mother 
or nurse be left-handed, the child would tend to be right- 
handed. Or if, as is the case in civilized countries, nurses 
largely replace the mothers, it would be necessary that 
most of the nurses be left-handed in order to make most of 
the children right-handed. Now none of these deductions 
are true. Further, the child, as a matter of fact, holds on 
with both hands, however it is itself held. 

Another theory maintains that the development of right- 
handedness is due to differences in weight of the two lateral 
halves of the body; this tends to bring more strain on one 
side than the other, and so to give more exercise, and so more 
development, to that side. This evidently assumes that 
children are not right- or left-handed before they learn to 
stand. This my results given below show to be false. Again, 
we are told that infants get right-handed by being placed on 
one side too much for sleep ; this can be shown to have little 
force also, when the precaution is taken to place the child 
alternately on its right and left sides for its sleeping periods. 

In the case of the child H., certain precautions were care- 
monograph on The Right Hand : Left-handedness, by my late lamented col- 
league and friend Sir Daniel Wilson. 



58 



The Origin of Right-handedness 



fully enforced. She was carried about in arms very little, 
never walked with when crying or sleepless (a ruinous and 
needless habit to cultivate in an infant) ; she was frequently 
turned over in her sleep ; she was not allowed to balance her- 
self on her feet until a later period than that covered by the 
experiments. Thus the conditions of the rise of the right- 
handed era were made as simple and uniform as possible. 

The experiments included, besides reaching for colours, 
a great many of reaching for other objects, at longer and 
shorter distances, and in unsymmetrical directions. The 
following table (III.) gives some details of the results of the 
experiments in which simple objects were used, extending 
over a period of four months, from the fifth to the ninth in 
her life. The number of experiments at each sitting varied 
from ten to forty; the position of the child being reversed, 
as to light from windows, position of observation, etc., after 
half of each series. 

TABLE III 



Date. 


No. of 
Series. 


No. of Ex- 
periments. 


Right 
Hand. 


Left 
Hand. 


Both 
Hands. 


1890. February 10th to March 15th 


30 


744 


173 


166 


405 


March 14th to April 14th . . 


25 


623 


134 


141 


348 


April 14th to May 14th . . . 


25 


546 


213 


130 


203 


May 14th to June 19th ... 


16 


274 


57 


131 


86 


Total 


96 


2,187 


577 


568 


1042 







It is evident from Table III. that no trace of preference 
for either hand is discernible during this period; indeed 
the neutrality is as complete as if it had been arranged 
beforehand, or had followed the throwing of dice. 



Experimental 



59 



I then conceived the idea that possibly a severer distance 
test might affect the result and show a marked preferential 
response by one hand over the other. I accordingly continued 
to use a neutral stimulus, but placed it from 12 to 15 inches 
away from the child. This resulted in very hard straining 
on her part, with all the signs of physical effort (explosive 
breathing-sounds resulting from the setting of the larynx, 
rush of blood to the head, seen in flushing of the face, etc., 
and flow of urine). Table IV. gives the results; the number 
in each series was intentionally made very small, from one 
to twelve, in order to avoid fatigue: — 

TABLE IV 





Date. 


No. of 
Series. 


No. of 
Trials. 


Right 
Hand. 


Left 
Hand. 


Both 
Hands. 


1890. May 26th to June ioth 


32 


80 


74 


5 


I 





The same cases, distributed according to distance, give 
us Table V.: — 

TABLE V 





12 Inches. 


13 Inches. 


14 Inches. 


15 Inches. 


Right hand 


29 


IO 


33 


2 


Left hand 


5 


— 


— 


— 


Both hands 


1 


— 


— 


— 



A comparison of Tables IV. and V. with Table III. shows 
a remarkable difference. During the month ending June 
15th, the child showed no decided preference for either hand 
in reaching straight before her within the easy reaching 



6o 



The Origin of Right-handedness 



distance of 10 inches, but a slight balance in favour of the 
left hand ; yet she was right-handed to a marked degree during 
the same period as regards movements which required effort 
or strain, such as grasping for objects 12 to 15 inches distant. 
For the greater distances, the left hand was used in only five 
cases as against seventy-four cases of the use of the right 
hand; and further, all these five cases were twelve-inch 
distances, the left hand being used absolutely not at all in 
the forty-five cases at longer distances. 

In order to test this further, I varied the point of exposure 
of the stimulus to the right or left, aiming thus to attract the 
hand on one side or the other, and so to determine whether 
the growth of such a preference was limited to experiences of 
convenience in reaching to adjacent local objects, etc. The 
result appears in Table VI. : — 

TABLE VI 



June 10th to 20th. 


12 Inches. 


13 Inches. 


14 Inches. 


15 Inches. 


Hand used. 


Deviations from me- 










Right. 


Left. 


dian line — 














2 to 6 inches to 














left. . . . 


10 cases 


15 cases 


4 cases 


~ 1 






2 to 6 inches to 










35 


— 


right . . . 


2 " 


3 " 


I " 


- J 






Same conditions with 














colour stimulus . 


— 


— 


— 


— 


15 


2 



This table shows that deviation to the left in front of the 
body only called out the right hand to greater exertion, while 
the left hand fell into still greater disuse. This seems to 
show that dextrality is not derived from the experience of the 
individual in using either hand predominantly for reaching, 
grasping, holding, etc., within the easiest range of that hand. 



Experimental 61 

The right hand intruded regularly upon the domain of 
the left. 

Proceeding upon the clue thus obtained, a clue which 
seems to suggest that the hand preference is influenced by 
the eye stimulus, I introduced hand observations into a 
series of experiments which I was making at that time on 
the same child's perception of the different colours ; thinking 
that the colour stimulus which represented the strongest 
inducement to the child to reach, might have the same effect 
in determining the use of the right hand as the increased 
distance in the experiments already described. This in- 
ference is proved to be correct by the results given in Table 
VII.: — 

TABLE VII 

Colour stimulus, J Hand Right. Left. Both. \ May 23d to 

10 to 15 inches [ Number of cases . 86 2 — J June 19th. 

It should be added that in all cases in which both hands 
are said to have been used, each hand was called out with 
evident independence of the other, both about the same 
time, and both carried energetically to the goal. In many 
other cases in which either right or left hand is given in 
the tables, the other hand also moved, but in a subordinate 
and aimless way. There was a very marked difference 
between the use of both hands in some cases, and of one 
hand followed by, or accompanied by, the other in other 
cases. It was very rare that the second hand did not thus 
follow or accompany the first ; and this was extremely marked 
in the violent reaching for which the right hand was mainly 
used. This movement was almost invariably accompanied 
by an objectless and fruitless symmetrical movement of the 
other. 

The results of the entire series of experiments on the 



62 The Origin of Right-handedness 

use of the hands may be stated as follows, mainly in the 
words in which I reported them summarily some time ago. 1 
i. I found no continued preference for either hand as 
long as there were no violent muscular exertions made 
(based on 2187 systematic experiments in cases of free 
movement of hands near the body: i.e. right hand, 577 cases; 
left hand, 568 cases, — a difference of 9 cases ; both hands, 
1042 cases ; the difference of 9 cases being too slight to have 
any meaning), the period covered being from the child's 
sixth to her tenth month inclusive. 

2. Under the same conditions, the tendency to use both 
hands together was about double the tendency to use either 
(seen from the number of cases of the use of both hands in 
the statistics given above). 

3. A distinct preference for the right hand in violent efforts 
in reaching became noticeable in the seventh and eighth 
months. Experiments during the eighth month on this cue 
gave, in 80 cases : right hand, 74 cases ; left hand, 5 cases ; 
both hands, 1 case. This was true in two very distinct classes 
of cases: first, reaching for objects, neutral as regards 
colour (newspaper, etc.), at more than the reaching distance; 
and, second, reaching for bright colours at any distance. 
Under the stimulus of bright colours, from 86 cases, 84 
were right-hand cases and 2 left-hand. Right-handedness 
had accordingly developed under pressure of muscular effort 

1 Science, XVI., Oct. 31, 1890; discussed by James, Science, Nov. 8, 1890, 
by Dr. J. T. O'Connor, Ibid., XVI., 1890, p. 331, and by myself, Ibid., XVI., 
Nov. 28, 1890. The results are quoted in full in Nature, Nov. 13, 1890, and 
in part in the Illustrated London News, Jan. 17, 1891. See discussions of 
them also in Zeitsch. fur Psychologie, II., 1891, p. 239; Wilson, The Right 
Hand: Left-handedness, pp. 128-131; Revue Scientifique, 1891, II., p. 493; 
Mazel, Revue Scientifique, 1892, I., p. 113. Both writers in the last-named 
journal cite these experiments wrongly as Wilson's. For later discussions 
of these and the colour experiments, see the child-study literature generally. 



Theoretical 63 

in the sixth and seventh months, and showed itself also under 
the influence of a strong colour stimulus to the eye. 

4. Up to this time the child had not learned to stand or 
to creep; hence the development of one hand more than 
the other is not due to differences in weight between the two 
longitudinal halves of the body. As she had not learned to 
speak or to utter articulate sounds with much distinctness, 
we may say also that right- or left-handedness may develop 
while the motor speech centre is not yet functioning. Further, 
the use of the right hand is carried over to the left side, show- 
ing that habit in reaching does not determine its use. 

5. In most cases involving the marked use of one hand 
in preference to the other, the second or backward hand 
followed slowly upon the lead of the first, in a way clearly 
showing symmetrical innervation of accompanying move- 
ments by the second hand. This confirms the inference as 
to such movements drawn from the phenomena of mirror- 
writing, etc., by Fechner and E. H. Weber. 1 

§ 2. Theoretical 

I. Some interesting points arise in connection with the 
interpretation of these facts. If it be true that the order of 
rise of mental and physiological functions is constant, then 
for this question the results obtained in the case of one child, 
if accurate, would hold for others apart from any absolute 
time determination. We would expect, therefore, that these 
results would be confirmed by experiments on other children, 
and this is the only way their correctness can be tested. 2 

1 I do not find, therefore, that these experiments warrant the negative in- 
ference on this question which Miinsterberg has drawn from them : Beitrdge 
zur Exp. Psych., Heft IV., p. 197. 

2 Vierordt says concerning such experiments : " Adequate observations 
are wanting on the grasping movements of the infant's left and right arm — a 



64 The Origin of Right-handedness 

If, when tested, they should be found correct, they would 
be sufficient answer to several of the theories of right-handed- 
ness heretofore urged. The phenomenon cannot be due, as I 
have said, to differences in balance of the two sides of the 
body, for it arises before the body begins to stand erect. It 
cannot be due to experience in the use of either hand, since 
it arises when there is no such difference of experience, and 
since the hand preferred is used, as a matter of fact, for pur- 
poses for which in experience the other would be altogether 
more convenient. 1 The rise of the phenomenon must be 
sought, therefore, in more deep-going facts of physiology 
than such theories supply. 

If, on the other hand, heredity be brought to the aid of 
these l experience' theories, it is possible to claim that, as 
structure follows function, experience of function must 
have been first in race history; and only then would the 
modification in structure which is now sufficient to produce 
right-handedness in individual cases have been brought about. 
On the other hand, if we go lower in the animal scale than 
man, analogies for the kinds of experience which are urged as 
reasons for right-handedness are not present ; animals do not 
carry their young, nor pat them to sleep, nor do animals 
shake hands ! It must therefore be shown that animals are 
right- or left-handed, or that they differ in some marked 
respect in regard to function, in their nervous make-up, from 
man. Admitting the need of meeting these requirements; 

kind of observation which would be of the first importance for this inquiry," 
Physiologie des Kindesalters, p. 428 ; and Wilson : " Only a prolonged series 
of observations, such as those by Professor Baldwin already noted, made at 
the first stage of life, and based on the voluntary and the unprompted actions 
of the child, can supply the needful data," Left-handedness, p. 209. 

1 An additional point, which I think is true, is that a right-handed child 
learns to shake hands properly — using the more inconvenient hand across 
his body — more easily than the left-handed child. 



Theoretical 65 

admitting again that we have little evidence that animals are 
dextral in their functions; admitting also the known results 
as to the control of the two halves of the muscular system 
by the opposite brain hemispheres respectively; admitting 
further that the motor speech function is performed by the 
hemisphere which controls the stronger side of the body, and 
is adjacent to the motor arm centre in that hemisphere; and 
admitting, finally, that the speech function is one in which 
the animals have little share, — all these admissions lead us 
at once to the view that there is a fundamental connection 
between the rise of speech and the rise of right-handedness. 1 
Looking broadly at the methods of nervous and muscular 
development, and accepting all the results of neurology we 
are able to gather, we may say that in the differentiation of 
functions in the animal series certain principles may be 
recognized: 1. The deep-seated vital functions represent 
least nervous differentiation, as is seen in the simple organs 
known as the lower nervous centres. 2. New symmetrical 

1 This much has been before surmised by Mazel, Revue Scientifique, 1892, 
I., p. 113. He makes no attempt, however, to account for the association, 
except by calling both functions expressive. Mr. F. H. Cushing has sent me 
a paper on 'Manual Concepts' (American Anthropologist, V., 1892, p. 289) 
in which he gives interesting evidence from philology and race customs among 
various peoples of the direct influence of hand movements upon spoken and 
written language. He finds evidence that the Zuhi and Roman numeral 
sounds are derived from hand words, and their numeral graphic signs are 
transcribed hand positions. It would be interesting also to inquire how far 
the right hand is predominant in gesture and sign languages, which precede 
articulate speech. Cushing points out that the left hand is usually a passive 
instrument which is manipulated actively by the right. The best report on 
sign-language is that of Mallery in Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, I., 1881, 
and the best discussion of the phenomenon is by Romanes, Ment. Evolution 
in Man, pp. 104 ff. I have asked Mr. Lester Jones, Fellow of Princeton Col- 
lege, to examine Col. Mallery's detailed reports of the actual signs employed 
in the sign-languages of the North American Indians, tabulating the cases in 
which either hand is used alone or predominantly. I give Mr. Jones' results 
in Appendix B, with some remarks upon their value for our present inquiry. 

F 



66 The Origin of Right-handedness 

functions give a differential or twofold organic development, 
the great instance of which is found in the cerebral hemi- 
spheres. 3. New asymmetrical or unilateral functions find 
their counterpart each in one of three kinds of nervous 
adaptation : (a) co-ordination of the hemispheres in a single 
function — i.e. functions which are crippled if either hemi- 
sphere is damaged; (b) co-ordination of particular functions 
in each hemisphere — i.e. functions which are not crippled 
unless both hemispheres are damaged ; and (c) co-ordination 
of particular functions in one hemisphere only — i.e. func- 
tions which are crippled only if one selected hemisphere is 
damaged. All these kinds of co-ordination exist. 

It is easy to see that both speech and right-handed func- 
tion belong under the last head of the last class — co-ordi- 
nations of particular functions in one hemisphere only — 
and that they belong in the same hemisphere. Why is this ? 
What have they in common ? 

A very essential kind of hand movements are the so-called 
1 expressive' movements, meaning those which serve to con- 
vey a meaning, or express a state of consciousness. Of 
course, speech is par excellence the function of expression. 
It is further only a part of the position upon which the psy- 
chological theory of expression is based, that all movements 
are in a sense expressive, and that details of expression and 
its relative fulness are matters of co-ordination. Now, this 
co-ordination has attained its ripest and most complex form, 
apart from speech, 1 in movements of the hand. Upon this 
view it is easy to hold that right-handedness is a form of 
expressive differentiation of movement, and that it preceded 
speech, which is a further and more complex form of differ- 
entiation serving the same utility. 

The neurological basis upon which this hypothesis rests is 

1 See physiological evidence, below, pp. 400 ff. 



Theoretical 67 

adequate, and affords a presumption as to the psychological 
development as well. The facts which are given in these 
pages go some way to support the view: 1. Right-handed- 
ness arose before speech in the child H. 2. Imitation by the 
hand of movements seen arises before articulate imitations of 
sounds heard ; 1 this in spite of the fact that hearing, in its 
development in the child, becomes perfect before sight. 
3. Characteristic differences in children in respect to their 
general mobility of arm and hand, manual skill, and quick- 
ness of manipulation, extend also to speech. As compared 
with my other child, E., the first-born, H., is remarkably 
agile and motile generally in her temperament; and her 
speech development was relatively much earlier and more 
rapid. 

It is interesting also to note that musical ability is asso- 
ciated with speech ability — a connection which would be 
expected when one takes due account of the expressive char- 
acter and function of music. As far as theories of the rise 
of musical expression have gone, they unite in finding its 
beginnings in the rudimentary emotional expressions of the 
animals. The singing of birds is undoubtedly connected 
with their mating instincts. Pathological cases also show a 
marked connection between musical execution and speech, 
to the extent that, while musical defect almost invariably 
involves speech defects, the reverse is much less generally 
true — a fact which confirms the view that music is an 
earlier form, but still a form, of expressive reaction. 

Late observations also show, as far as they are sufficient, 
that the centre for music expression is also located normally 
in the left hemisphere for right-handed persons. Oppenheim 

1 See Chap. VI., § 4. It is interesting that of both hand and speech 
movements the latest to be lost in disease are those involved in the so-called 
'mimicry' of movement and in imitative speech. 



68 The Origin of Right-handedness 

reports a case * of total aphasia with total arnusia (lack of 
musical ability from disease) in which the recovery of speech 
brought with it musical recovery also. Furthermore, an- 
other case of Oppenheim's shows motor aphasia with motor 
amusia only — i.e. the patient could still understand tunes, 
and, further, could imagine tunes ' in his head/ 2 while he 
could not sing them. This shows a close connection in 
locality between motor speech and motor music function, 
while a slight separateness of the two centres in locality in 
the left hemisphere explains cases of motor aphasia in which 
execution is preserved. Further, Frankl-Hochwart declares 
that no cases are recorded of amusia from lesion in the right 
hemisphere, 3 and Starr says of a patient of his : 4 " My 
patient is right-handed, and music does follow speech in 
being unilaterally located; ... it is well proved that the 
musical faculty is one-sided in location." Despite these posi- 
tive opinions, however, I think more critical cases with 
autopsy are necessary to make the position quite secure. 

The service which speech owes to gesture is emphasized 
by Romanes in the following words: " Although gesture 
language is not in my opinion so efficient a means of develop- 
ing abstract ideation as is spoken language, it must neverthe- 
less have been of much service in assisting the growth of the 
latter, and ... in laying the foundation of the whole mental 
fabric which has been constructed by the faculty of speech. 
Whether we look to children, to savages, or, in a lesser 
degree, to idiots, we find that gesture plays an important 

1 Charite Annalen, XIII., 1888, p. 286. 

2 Cf. Chap. XIV., below, for further exposition of the mechanism of speech 
and the music function. 

3 This means that all cases noted have been right-handed. Deutsche 
Zeilsch. fur N ervenheilkunde, 1891, I., p. 295, and foot-note. 

4 In a private letter. The case is referred to by Starr in The Psychological 
Review, January, 1894, p. 92. 



Theoretical 69 

part in assisting speech ; and in all cases where a vocabulary 
is scanty or imperfect, gesture is sure to be employed as the 
natural means of supplementing speech. . . . Therefore it 
is, in my opinion, perfectly certain that its origin and develop- 
ment must have been assisted by gesture. There can be no 
doubt that the reciprocal influence must have been great in 
both directions, and that it must have proceeded from ges- 
ture to speech in the first instance, and afterwards from speech 
to gesture." 

All this means simply that the general cause to which is 
due the fact of right-handedness is also the cause, through 
further differentiation and emphasis in the same local seat, 
of the development of speech and of musical ability. It now 
remains to ask : What was or is this cause, and when in the 
race history series did it begin to operate ? There are only 
two hypotheses of any force — either that of ' experience,' or 
that of 'spontaneous variation' at some stage in biological 
development. 

It is extremely improbable that dextrality should have 
arisen among the quadrupeds, or amanous bipeds, for ex- 
perience was lacking of unilateral stimulation, and a spon- 
taneous variation of this kind would have produced such 
inconvenience of locomotion and ultimately such asymmetry 
of form that it would have been weeded out. 1 As an extreme 
example, fancy a bird become dextral in its flight. 2 

As soon as we come to bipeds with hands, however, these 
reasons do not hold. Their locomotion does not depend on 
manual symmetry, and any dextrality, however slight, would 
be of direct advantage in climbing, fighting, breaking sticks, 

1 For this reason the human leg, as Brown-Sequard says, is not as one- 
sided as the arm. Any great unevenness would produce lameness and 
relative incapacity. 

2 The only evidence I know of such a thing is that a cat swims in a circle ; 
but then dogs and horses do not, and these do not drown, while the cat does. 



7<D The Origin of Right-handedness 

and pulling fruit; since a disproportionate growth of one 
side would give that side greater strength than either side 
would possess in animals of symmetrical development in the 
same environment. A very strong one-armed man can keep 
at bay a weaker man with two arms, or destroy him; and 
this is emphasized in animals, where brute force is the only 
resource. It is difficult to find, however, in the habits of 
simians any ground for believing that there has been a form 
of unilateral stimulation which would act to effect a structural 
change in one hemisphere over and above the other. This, 
rather than the anatomical causes suggested by Romanes, 
may be one of the reasons the monkeys have not developed 
speech. Their conditions of life stimulation are such that 
there has been no chance for the development of the centre 
for ' expression' in the left temporal brain-lobe. They have 
been compelled to maintain bilateral balance of function. 

But, apart from this, there is every reason to expect, quite 
independently of function, that two organs of such compara- 
tive separateness and independence of function as the two 
hemispheres would not remain exactly balanced in function; 
in short, spontaneous variations giving advantageous dex- 
trality would inevitably arise and persist as soon as the habits 
of life were not such that more important functions, such as 
locomotion, tended to suppress them and restore bilateral 
equilibrium. 1 There are, as far as I know, very few pub- 
lished observations of fact in regard to simian or animal 
dextrality. 2 

1 It is on this point that I differ from Wilson, who claims that, while some 
are naturally right- or left-handed, most people owe the peculiarity to educa- 
tion; the evidence against Wilson's view, apart from my present results, is 
well put by Mazel, loc. cit. 

2 I know only the assertion of Vierordt that parrots grasp and hold food 
with the left claw, that lions strike with the left paw, and his quotation from 
Livingstone — 'All animals are left-handed' (Vierordt, loc. cit., p. 428). 



Theoretical 7 1 

It is likely, therefore, that right-handedness in the child is 
due to differences in the two half-brains, being always asso- 
ciated with speech, that the promise of it is inherited, and 
that the influences of infancy have little effect upon it. Yet, of 
course, regular habits of disuse or of the cultivation of the 
other hand may, as the child grows up, diminish or destroy 
the disparity between the two. And this inherited brain- 
onesidedness also accounts for the association of right- 
handedness, speech, and music faculty, the speech function 
being a further development of the same unilateral power of 
movement found first in right- or left-handedness. 

II. A further point of psychological interpretation is of 
some interest. How are we to account for the fact that a 
bright colour stimulus exposed at a lesser distance brought 

Dr. W. Ogle reports observations on parrots and monkeys in Trans. Royal 
Med. and Chirur. Society, 1871. Dr. Ogle informs me in a private letter that 
the chimpanzee which recently died in the Zoological Garden in London was 
discovered by him to be left-handed. I have addressed a circular letter to 
some of the officials in zoological institutions here and abroad, and hope to 
gather some facts in this way. If it should prove true that the lower animals 
are left-sided, then the current view that right-handed children have a pre- 
liminary period of left-handedness — a view to which my Table III., above, 
gives some support — might have its explanation in the hypothesis of the repe- 
tition of phylogenetic development in the individual child. My own expe- 
rience with parrots now (1906) confirms Vierordt. My birds stand on the 
right and hold the food with the left claw. 

It is evident that on this theory of spontaneous variation any change 
which produced a permanent organic superiority of one hemisphere would 
be sufficient, and the view that the difference in the hemispheres is due to 
a better blood supply to the left hemisphere might thus have its justification. 
As a matter of fact, the arterial arrangements do seem to indicate a more 
direct blood supply to the left hemisphere (cf. the note of Dr. J. T. O'Connor, 
apropos of my experiments, in Science, XVI., 1890, p. 331). It is an interest- 
ing inquiry whether this arterial arrangement is reversed in left-handed per- 
sons. Wilson cites two cases in which there was no such correspondence 
{loc. cit. y p. 179). 



72 The Origin of Right-handedness 

out the right hand, while a neutral stimulus required a 
greater distance? 

The general fact may be expressed in the symbols of the 
formula which I have proposed for the so-called dynamogenic 
method of experimentation. It will be remembered that in 
the formula * 

»-? 5- 

D represented the drawing-out tendency, the amount of 
dynamogeny exercised by a given stimulus; q the quality 
of this stimulus (colour, etc); and d the distance. If the 
tendency to use one particular hand in preference to the 
other hand be designated by r, we now find from the experi- 
ments that 

r—K • d, (i) 

but, by the general law that distance decreases influence, 



D-*.i; 


(2) 


consequently, r=fc • — . 


(3) 


Again, we find from the experiments that 




i 
r=/c • -, 

q (colour) 

but D — k • q\ 


(4) 
(5) 


consequently, r—K • — , 


(6) 


the same result as (3). 

So it seems from both results of the experiments 


that 



1 Above, Chap. II., § 3, 



Theoretical 73 

right-handedness varies inversely as the dynamogenic influ- 
ence of the stimulus, whether that dynamogenic influence be 
colour or distance. 

The question of interpretation, then, is this : How does it 
come that increasing distance, which would be supposed to 
lessen the calling-out force of a stimulus by lessening its 
intensity, clearness, etc., yet tends to do exactly what a bright 
colour at a lesser distance does, i.e. to call out increased 
dynamogeny, with the use of the right hand ? 

Of course the explanation is evident enough. The child 
has learned by experience (or has inherited the organic con- 
ditions) that more effort, higher D, is necessary in the case 
of a more distant stimulus ; and so a central supply goes out 
to reinforce the influence D of this distant stimulus, and the 
right-handedness is the evidence of this reinforced D. We 
would expect, on the other hand, that the colour, being itself 
a more dynamogenic stimulus, would have the same effect, 
without the central reinforcement, and also bring out the 
right hand. 1 And so it does. 

A farther point of interest is seen in the inhibition of the 
movement altogether when the distance is slightly increased, 
i.e. to fifteen inches or over, as given in the tables. It shows 
that even at the age of this child very accurate visual estima- 
tion of distance has already been acquired, as I had occasion 
to say in the last chapter. The child's interpretation of the 
distance inhibits all effort to reach across it. The interpre- 

1 On this point, Professor William James writes {Science, Nov. 14, 1890, 
p. 295), apropos of my experiments when first announced: "These observa- 
tions seem very interesting, as showing how strong (attractive) stimuli may 
produce more definitely localized reactions than weaker ones. The baby 
grasped at bright colours with the right hand almost exclusively." I find 
this but natural, not because the reaction is 'more definitely localized,' but 
because that is an incident to a larger and more massive discharge through 
the particular channel which is ready for it. 



74 The Origin of Right-handedness 

tations undoubtedly result, in the case of the child, in my 
opinion, from associations of visual indications of distance 
with sensations of hand and arm movement. And I find 
that this association gives rise to three determinations — all 
matters of experience and all becoming remarkably refined 
— (i) the safe-reaching distance (use of either hand or both) ; 

(2) the uncertain-reaching distance (use of right hand) ; and 

(3) the impossible-to-reach distance (no hand movement, but 
a turning away of face and body). 

The process of learning this lesson in distance, and with 
it the waxing ability of the stronger hand, is so graphically 
described by James in a private letter that I quote it, with 
his permission: "Admitting the experience hypothesis 
(which I adopt from you now, 1 since I have made no obser- 
vations, and your sense of what is likely in this regard seems 

1 In view of my letter in Science, Nov. 28, 1890, p. 302. He adds, how- 
ever, after the above quotation: "Although I have made every possible con- 
cession to the experience theory, as adopted by you, I must say that the notion 
of a specialized native impulsiveness for the right hand when certain distances 
appeal to the eye lingers in my mind as that of a natural possibility." This 
is refuted, I think, if it be a fact that infants ' grasp at the moon ' with either 
hand indiscriminately, the 'moon' standing for any object at any distance. 
The possibility of such native adaptations cannot be doubted, for some 
young animals seem to have different native responses adjusted to different 
distances ; but in the case of the child, experience seems to be waited for to 
develop many things which are really native. 

I endeavoured to test H.'s native sense of locality on the body, apart 
from the association with sight, by dangling my watch-chain gently from day 
to day on the top of her head, and by gently pinching one or other of her 
ears occasionally, watching the movements of her hands in their search for 
the chain and the ear. Up to about the middle of her third month the hand 
movements seemed perfectly random, 'up' and 'back' being about the only 
tendencies which indicated any sense of locality whatever. In the third 
month, however, she seemed to begin to learn where to find the objects, 
especially the ear; but the success was apparently due to the experience. 
Cf. Lloyd Morgan's instances of 'probably instinctive' actions, in Habit 
and Instinct, Chaps. II., IV., where he cites these results. 



Theoretical 75 

to me to have great weight), the way I represent the matter 
to myself is thus : The child originally responds to all optical 
excitements which strike his attention by bounding up and 
down, and moving both arms. Ere long the movement be- 
comes one of grasping with both. Some graspings prove easy, 
and the original bilateral medianism continues for a while 
associated with these. Others are protracted ; and the 
superior native efficiency of the right hand, in reaching the 
goal, here acts so as to inhibit the left hand altogether when 
the stimulus suggests a case of this kind. Others, again, 
never succeed, the object being beyond range altogether; 
and all movements are inhibited for these at last." 

Now, the point to be observed is this, that the dynamogenic 
effect of distance (d in the formula) is not natively provided 
for, as is that of quality (q, colour in this case) : it is an 
acquired effect, called out through experiences of relative dis- 
tance. Relative distances are 'interpreted' in terms of past 
experience, and this gives them their present force. The 
course of the nervous disturbance is through the higher cir- 
cuit which association involves, and which on the motor side 
implicates attention; while the dynamogenic effect of colour 
or of sensation qualities generally, which prompt native re- 
actions, is by a lower reflex circuit. One is an ideo-motor 
reaction, based on association ; the other is a native sensori- 
motor reaction. 

It is necessary, therefore, again to alter profoundly our 
conception of the simplest dynamogenic formula in view of 
the element of association in the simplest reaction involving 
distance. And it is easy to see what becomes of the formula 
as soon as association gets to be a little complex ; for d, we 
must substitute a symbol to stand for the central influence 
as a whole, say <£ ; and of course with increasing complexity 
of experience the meaning of <f> becomes more and more 



76 The Origin of Right-handedness 

recondite. With adults, therefore, such a formula would be 
in most cases nothing more than tautology. 1 With infants it 

1 The only way to experiment on volition, accordingly, is by using com- 
parative stimulations of no meaning or association, or by keeping the associa- 
tion element constant, by using the same stimulation repeatedly. I have 
endeavoured to experiment on volition by observing the effect on action of the 
same stimulation apprehended through different senses, i.e. the tendency to 
draw a figure seen in one case and traced by the hand in the other (Proc. Cong. 
Exper. Psych., London, 1892, p. 51) ; see below, Chap. XIII., § 3. 

A further point deserves a word. In the original announcement of these 
experiments I found it necessary to think that the child's reaching with the 
right hand only in cases involving long distances and effort could not be ex- 
plained without supposing that her sense of motor discharge in the case of 
effort was something different from that in case of movements without effort, 
i.e. that there was a central sense of motor potential of some kind. Profes- 
sor James in Science and in private letters, and Professor Dewey later in a 
private letter, suggest that the child might be guided by its sense of greater 
success, skill, ease, etc., in the case of earlier right-hand movements — all 
peripheral, not central, elements. I am not strenuous for my interpretation ; 
indeed the other seems to me now more natural and simple. It is to be hoped 
that more experiments will be forthcoming ; but with my experience with both 
my children I find certain facts which I cannot explain on the peripheral view : 
(1) The child does not show differences of ease, skill, etc., in favour of either 
hand at this early age, as far as can be detected; (2) after beginning to use 
the right hand for strenuous efforts the two hands are still used indiscrimi- 
nately for easy movements, near distances, etc. How can this be explained ? 
Why should not the child economize — as adults do — in all movements, using 
the right hand after experience of its 'greater efficiency' for everything, when 
circumstances permit? The view of Professor James seems to require what 
I may call a 'cat and kitten' arrangement of nervous discharges, i.e. certain 
pathways of voluminous discharge for right-hand movements opened up by 
earlier more successful movements, and, at the same time, other pathways for 
the same discharges when less voluminous — not due to the earlier successful 
movements. We have not knowledge enough to say it may not be ; but it 
looks to me like a 'large hole for the cat and a little hole for the kitten' — 
an arrangement which Professor James argues against, at least in one con- 
nection {Princ. of Psychology, Vol. L, p. 592). But that the child does ex- 
tend the use of the right hand, even when circumstances would seem to dis- 
courage it, is seen in, (3), the very striking fact, that the right hand is used 
to grasp objects, etc., which lie on the left side of the child; movements in 
which the left hand would seem to have actually more skill, ease, and prac - 
tice. Professor Ladd seems to accept my first interpretation {Psychology, 
Descriptive and Explanatory, p. 222). 



Theoretical 77 

remains useful only for such elementary experiences as those 
I have enumerated above. 

Again, as at the end of the last chapter, I must call atten- 
tion not only to the complication which these experiments 
give to the method of studying children, but also to the fine 
uniformity which appears through them in the working of 
the law of dynamogenesis, upon which rests the theory of 
development stated in the following chapters. 



CHAPTER V 

Infants' Movements 
§ i. Descriptive; Tracery Imitation 

In earlier chapters, the general conditions of infants' re- 
sponses in movement have been pointed out and some special 
problems set: a few further points of interest may now be 
brought up in connection with the rise of the more complex 
movements. 

From the beginning of independent life, movement is the 
infant's natural response to all influences. And, more than 
this, Bain and Preyer seem to have made out their case, that 
from the outset there are movements which are spontaneous, 
due to discharge of the motor centres unsolicited by definite 
external stimulations. 1 At any rate, no observation made 
after birth can decide the question one way or the other 
whether sensation or movement is the earlier fact in onto- 
genetic development. It remains for the embryologists to 
continue their work, and this is where Preyer's results get 
their principal value. 

Reflexes. — In regard to movements more properly reflex 
and responsive, I may record a few detached observations 
on my child. Carefully planned experiments with her, made 
in the ninth month, showed the native walking reflex — alter- 
native movement of the legs — very strongly marked. I held 
her by the body, having made the legs quite free, in a posi- 

1 A position extended to micro-organisms by Jennings, Behaviour of 
Lower Organisms, 1906. 

78 



Descriptive 79 

tion which allowed the bare feet to rest lightly upon a smooth 
table. The reflex seemed to come somewhat suddenly, for 
up to the middle of the eighth month I could not discover 
more than a single alternation; and this I had determined 
not to take as evidence, since it might well arise by chance. 
But, in the ninth month, I observed as many as three and 
four well-regulated alternations, in succession. At first most 
of these movements were the reverse of the natural walking 
movements, being oftenest such as would carry the child 
backward. This, however, passed away. I have the follow- 
ing note on June 13, 1890, the child being one day short of 
nine months old : " Walking movements, 3 to 4 alternations, 
backwards oftenest, but tending rapidly to forward move- 
ments ; later, 2 experiments, each showing 3 to 4 alternations 
forwards very plainly;" and on June 19: "Fine activity in 
walking reflex — good alternations, but more backwards than 
forwards — clearly reflex, from stimulus to the soles." It is 
easy to see that this backward alternation * might be due to 
some accident of stimulation or discharge when the reflex 
was first called out ; a tendency which early efforts at creep- 
ing would soon correct. Yet in H.'s case, it was so marked 
that for a period she preferred to creep backward. 2 

A few observations were made also upon unilateral re- 
flexes. 3 A gentle touch with finger or feather on the cheek, 

1 Two other cases of this have been verbally reported to me. A. G. Parrott 
reports such alternative movements in a boy twelve weeks old. The second 
exact observation I owe to Professor Cattell. 

2 For interesting experiments on the method and variations of walking by 
different children of both sexes and by adults, see H. Vierordt, Der Gang des 
Menschen (Tubingen, 1881). Similar valuable observations might be made 
by measurements of the intervals, directions, etc., of children's footprints in 
the damp yielding sand of the seashore. 

3 Cf. Kussmaul, Untersuchungen zur Seelenleben der Neugebornen Men- 
schen, p. 18, for similar experiments; and Vierordt, in Gerhard? s Handbuch 
der Kinderkrankheiten, I., p. 215. 



80 Infants Movements 

or beside the nose, or upon the ear, when H. was sleeping 
quietly upon her back, called out always the hand on the 
same side. After two or three such irritations, her sleep be- 
came troubled and she turned upon the bed, or used both 
hands to rub the place stimulated. Tickling of the sole of 
the foot also, besides causing a reaction in the same foot, 
tended to bring about a movement of the hand on the same 
side. These observations, not a large number, were made 
in the sixth, seventh, and eighth months. 

In order to test the growth of voluntary control over the 
muscles of the hand and fingers, I determined to observe 
the phenomena of H.'s attempts at drawing and writing, for 
which she showed great fondness as soon as imitation was 
well fixed. Selecting a few objects well differentiated in 
outline, — animals which she had already learned to recog- 
nize and name after a fashion, — I drew them one by one 
on paper and let her imitate the ' copy/ The results I have 
in a series of 'drawings' of hers, extending from the last 
week of her nineteenth month to the middle of the twenty- 
seventh month. The results show that, with this child, up 
to the beginning of the twenty-seventh month there was no 
connection apparent between a mental picture in conscious- 
ness and the movements made by the hands and fingers in 
attempting to draw it. The ' drawing ' was simply the vaguest 
and most general imitation of the teacher's movements, not 
the tracing of a mental picture. And the attempt was no 
better when a 'copy' was made by myself on the paper — ■ 
a rough outline drawing of a man, etc. There was no 
semblance of conformity between the child's drawing 
and the copy. Further, while she could identify the 
copy and name the animal, she could not identify her own 
effort, except so far as she remembered what object she set 
out to make. See Figures I., II., III., and IV., for speci- 



Descriptive 



81 



mens illustrating the straightness and rigidity of her early 
attempts. 




Man: 19th month. 



Cat: 10th month. 
Fig. I. 




Man: 20th month. 
Early Drawings with Copy 





Man: 20th month. Bird: 20th month. 

Fig. II. — Early Drawings without Copy 

With it all there was on her face an expression of 
dissatisfaction with her later attempts, similar to that 
which one observes in the efforts of the year-old to 
speak. My little girl would hide her head after making 
a drawing, extend the pencil to me, and say, 'Papa make 
man.' It seemed to indicate a sense of what was ex- 
pected beyond the ability to attain the process of accom- 
plishing it. 

In Figs. III. and IV. we see some growth in variety 
of shape and direction with increased mobility of the 
hand and arm, but still no imitation in outline is 
apparent. 



82 



Infants Movements 





b. Cat. d. Cow. 

Fig. III.— Drawing without Copy: End of 25TH Month 





\\* 



a. Man (two trials). b. Bird. 

Fig. iv. — With Copy: Early in 26TH Month 

Fig. V. shows further complications in movement. 





a. Man : with copy. b. Man : without copy. 

Fig. V. — Later more Complicated Drawings 

In the nature of the movements which the child made 
in this series of drawings, there is marked change and 



Descriptive 83 

development which may be briefly described. There is 
growth from angular straight lines to curves, from move- 
ments one way exclusively to reverse movements, and an 
increasing tendency to complex intricate figures, which last 
probably results from greatly increased ease, variety, and 
rapidity of movement. At first she made only sweep- 
ing 'arm movements,' then began to flex the wrist some- 
what, and toward the end of the series given above, as is 
evident in the figures, with no teaching, manipulated the 
pencil with her fingers considerably. This seems to give 
support to the opinion of professional writing-teachers 
that the 'arm movement' is most natural and effective for 
purposes of penmanship. 

Further, all her curves were made by movements from 
left to right going upward and from right to left down- 
ward, like the movements of the hands of a clock (see the 
arrow-heads in Fig. V. a). This is the method of our usual 
writing as contrasted with 'back-hand.' She also pre- 
ferred lateral to vertical movements on the paper. Her 
most frequent and easy 'drawing' consisted of a series of 
rapid right and left strokes almost parallel to one another, 
constituting very narrow and long loops. 

But early in the twenty-seventh month a change came. 
I drew a rough human figure, naming the parts in succes- 
sion as they were made: she suddenly seemed to catch the 
idea of tracing each part, and she now for the first time began 
to make figures with vertical and horizontal proportion; 
i.e. she followed the order she saw me take : 'head' (circle), 
'body' (ellipse) below, 'legs' (two straight lines) further 
below, 'hands' (two lines) at the sides of the body. It was 
all done in the crudest fashion, as would be expected from 
the lack of muscular co-ordination. But the fact was un- 
mistakable that with the simplification of the figure by 



84 Infants' Movements 

breaking it up into parts had come also the idea of tracery 
imitation, and its imperfect execution. By the 'idea' of 
tracery imitation, I mean the sense of connection between 
what was visually in her own consciousness and the move- 
ment of her own hand or pencil. The visual pictures or 
copies had been there in all her previous trials, and so had 
the hand movements, both the sight of them and the mus- 
cular sensations ; but there had been no sense of a connection 
between them and agreement in the result when they were 
compared. 

As yet, however, it was limited to two or three copies — 
objects which she saw me make. That it was now not 
simply imitation of my movements is evident from the 
fact that she did not imitate my movements: she looked 
intently upon the figure which I made, not at my move- 
ments, and then strove to imitate the figure with move- 
ments of her own very different from mine. But she had 
not generalized the idea away from particular figures, for 
she could not trace at all an altogether new figure in right 
lines. Further, she traced these particular figures just 
as well without written copies before her: here, therefore, 
is the rise 0) the tracery imitation 0) the child's own mental 
picture — a fact of great theoretical interest. 1 

Fig. VI. reproduces the first successful imitation of a 
visual copy, the copy which she imitated being also given. 

Figs. VII. and VIII. show further development in freedom 
and complication. 

A curious phenomenon, which has been noticed also by 
Passy 2 in the drawings of much older children, was evident 
in H.'s attempts to extend her drawings to other objects. 
This is the tendency to neglect the new object or copy and 

1 See first announcement in Science, Jan. 8, 1892. 
3 Revue Philosophique, December, 1891, p. 614. 



Descriptive 



85 



substitute for it in whole or part some drawing which she 
had already learned to make. For example, having ana- 





a. Copy. 



b. Drawing: l.head; 2, body; 3, 4, legs; 5, 6, arms 
(all in the order in which they were made). 



Fig. VI. — First Successful Tracery Imitation: Dec. 8, 1891 (Last 
Week of 27TH Month) 

lyzed man after me into head, body, legs, and arms, this 
became her scheme for drawing all other creatures. When 
told to draw a bird after a copy set before her, she gave it 
all these features, conforming them in a measure to the 
general shape of a bird, but putting two strokes at the sides 
for arms. I shall say more about this fact in the next sec- 



86 



Infants Movements 




a. With copy. b. Without copy. 

Fig. VII. — Man: Dec. 13, 1891 (Last Day of 27TH Month) 

tion in discussing the origin of handwriting; it is also sug- 
gestive in connection with the rise of the general notion. 1 

The differences to be seen by comparing a. and b. in each 
of the Figs. VII. and VIII. show the degree in which the child 
was still dependent upon the external visual copy for the 
control of her imitation tracings. She copied her memory 
picture, at least when she had no external copy; but she 
controlled the reproduction by the copy, when she had it. 

1 See below, Chap. XI., § 1. 



Descriptive 



87 




a. With copy. 



b. Without copy. 



Fig. VIII. — Late Drawings: Man (28TH Month). The Words written 
in Figs. VII. a. and VIII. b. are from the Child's own Utterances, 
taken down at the Time, as she drew the Several Parts. The 
apparent facial outline in a. OF this figure is, I THINK, purely 
accidental. 



88 Infants Movements 



§ 2. Interpretation oj Tracery Imitation: the Origin of 
Handwriting 

It is easily seen that the fact to which I have given the 
name 'tracery imitation' lies at the basis of handwriting. 
It is clear that handwriting is acquired by imitation of a 
copy. Each letter is acquired by the tracing out of a form 
put before the child. There are two very distinct steps, 
however, in the acquisition of handwriting, the first of which 
is tracery imitation of an external copy; and the second is 
the similar imitation of a memory picture or form. The 
relation of these two things to each other and, with that, the 
general theory of handwriting, requires farther analysis. 
I shall depict in some detail the progress of this function, 
since it serves to illustrate the general theory of the develop- 
ment of muscular control worked out in a later chapter. 

The preliminary question as to how the child gets its 
visual apprehension of form may be answered, and has been, 
in two ways. Some hold that the actual form or arrange- 
ment of the retinal elements stimulated by the rays of light 
from the object seen is conveyed to consciousness by a series 
of ' local signs ' — distinct quality of some kind which serves 
to distinguish each visual or anatomical point from every other. 
Others hold that the eye explores in its movement the outline 
of the object, and a constant succession of sensations of eye 
movement thus represents the particular form explored. It 
is safe to say that, whether one or both of these causes operate 
to give the child its form intuition, we can still say that there 
is a constant series of sensations from the eyes, which can be 
run over in one direction, or the reverse; this we may call 
the l visual form series,' v, v', v", in the analysis of hand- 
writing. 



The Origin of Handwriting 89 

But the child, in setting out to draw, moves his hand, 
thus getting sensations from the hand itself according to its 
locality at this moment and at that. If you consider the 
hand as moving slowly, it will be evident that there are touch 
sensations, joint sensations, muscle-tension sensations, etc., 
giving together a certain massive sense of the locality of the 
hand as it goes from place to place. With no care as to the 
exact character of these sensations, we may yet say that there 
is a series which is constant for the drawing of the outline of 
a plane figure; this series we may call the 'muscular form 
series,' denoted by m, m f , m" . 

But, further, the child has other means of finding out about 
movements than by the sensations from his own hand and 
arm. He sees other people's movements and his own. In 
this case of drawing, he is instructed in holding his pencil, 
sees his teacher move his pencil over the paper, sees his 
own arm and hand and pencil-point in each case. This, 
it is evident, gives a more or less exact additional series of 
eye sensations, according as the child is able by frequent 
following of the movements of others and himself to appro- 
priate each such set of movements to a regular visual form. 
This third series of sensations, in a particular case, we may 
call the ' optical movement series,' 0, o' ', 0", etc. 

It is evident that the acquisition of writing involves all 
of these three series ; and it is easy to show that they are all 
present in our most rapid and careless writing. If one 
shut his eyes and write, he preserves the general form of 
the letters, but they are badly made compared with those 
which he makes when he sees his pen and follows its move- 
ment. This shows his dependence upon the series. But 
he can still very greatly improve his penmanship if his paper 
be ruled, or more again if he write after a well-written copy ; 
this shows the dependence, relatively slight, upon the v 



90 Infants" Movements 

series. As to the revival of the v series also, as copies to which 
to conform, cases of verbal blindness show that lesions of the 
optical brain centre may make it impossible for one to write 
at all. 1 Further, if we try to write with the skin benumbed 
with cold, or on a surface which yields, the letters are made 
without form and thrown out of their due proportion. This 
in turn shows the continual presence of the m series. 2 

That a child gets his visual form (v) series first is proved 
from his recognition and even naming of figures, pictures, 
etc., before he draws them or sees them drawn. These 
series are at first few, but he gradually adds to them as 
the range of his exploration becomes wider and as familiar 
objects become in his experience more and more familiar. 
There is a constant tendency, therefore, from the random 
wandering of the eyes over many forms and over shape- 
less things, to concentration on interesting, familiar, and 
regular forms of things. So we may say there is a continual 
growth and upbuilding of different v series. 

This is at the expense of the optical movement (o) 
series, as may be seen from the following considerations : 
At first the child follows all movements, that he sees, of 
himself and of others, with equal attention — his eye is a 
slave to movement anywhere and everywhere — his atten- 
tion is reflex and visual. He looks closely at his own move- 
ments. His visual figure series follows in consciousness the 
cue set by his optical movement series, term by term, thus : — 



o, 


o' 


o", 


</", 


etc., 


\ 


\ 


\ 


\ 




v, 


v\ 


*", 


v"' 


etc. 



1 See cases cited by Brazier, Revue Philosophique, October, 1892, p. 338. 

2 See Goldscheider's demonstration of the importance of pressure sen- 
sations in handwriting, Physiologie u. Pathologie der Handschrijt, in Zeit- 
schrift filr Psychiatrie, XXIV., 1892. 



The Origin of Handwriting 91 

But when he learns, as I have said, to select his v series, he 
then reverses his association and so has to select out certain 
series. He sees and attends to the movements that interest 
him, the things that concern him; he prefers the toys which 
his eye explores by preference. So, continually, the series 
get broken up and formed anew, according as the elements 
are lined up anew under the lead of the v series, thus : — 



V, 


if, 


*>", 


*/", 


etc., 


\ 


\ 


\ 


\ 




• o, 


*', 


*", 


</", 


etc. 



Now there, in this association, is the rise of 'tracery 
imitation' in its crudest form; this reversal of association 
between the and the v elements. Its characteristics, as 
imitation, are merely the vaguest indications of direction 
and proportion. It utilizes no constant m series ; that is, no 
constant detailed series of hand and arm movements, but 
only the up and down, and right and left, movements acquired 
by the child in its early random exercises, together with 
whatever more definite movements education may have pro- 
duced. As I interpret it, H.'s ability suddenly to 'imitate' 
my drawing of a man was largely the discovery that by a 
series of ordinary movements of her own which she saw (0 
element), and which her random practice had made easy, 
she could bring about, in a measure, what I did. Instead of 
her eye following the tracing left by the point of the pen 
(v series subordinated to series), as formerly it did, she now 
found that her hand and pen, as she watched them, could 
follow the outline I had made, or her memory of it (0 series 
subordinated to the v series). 

Such as it is, however, tracery imitation is a long way 
from handwriting. And the essential difference is the intro- 
duction of sensations of movement {m series), whereby 



92 Infants Movements 

the operations of the hand are held in control. How, then, 
does the m series get its influence ? 

Eye movements start in a chaotic random state, as we have 
seen, and only gradually take on the definite character of 
separate series, as the customary explorations, fixations, 
visual curiosities of experience serve to fix them. But arm 
movements are just the reverse. At first the arm is capable 
of very few movements, the elbow of one, and the fingers of 
none. Moreover, the joints are stiff, the movements to a 
degree inconvenient, and all ventures away from certain 
reactions provided for by native arrangements are painful 
and unsuccessful. This means that the child starts with 
certain very definite arm movements (m series). But this 
does not last. He gets limbered up. His m , series gets 
broken into units and recombined into new series. This is 
seen in the progress shown in H/s series of drawings given 
above. 

This prepares the way for a second victory of the v series. 
At first the hand must move in certain directions represented 
in consciousness by the series m, tn', m" , etc.; the eye can 
move in any direction indifferently; so the eye follows the 
hand, and we have in consequence : — 

etc., 

etc. 

But as the m's get broken up out of their native series and the 
v's get tied together into series, there comes a conflict for 
leadership, followed by the reverse association : — 

etc., 

etc. 



n, 


m', 


w", 


*»'", 


\ 


\ 


\ 


\ 


*>, 


*>', 


f', 


*"'. 



% 


v\ v", v'" e 


\ 


\ \ \ 


- w, 


m' , w", m'" 



The Origin of Handwriting 93 

Now certain muscular sensations (m elements) represent 
movements which, being also seen, have elements attached 
to them. And we have already seen that tracery imitation 
requires a certain correspondence between relatively fixed 
v series and relatively free series. The breaking up of 
the m series just described now makes it possible for more 
of these correspondences to occur, i.e. for more movements 
seen to describe figures seen. Now it is by the gradual 
increase of these correspondences, this practice and emphasis 
into habit, that handwriting is built up with much effort. 

There is, therefore, an extremely close association between 
a visual figure series and the series of hand movements re- 
quired to reproduce it. And this association between them 
is secured by the reproduction concomitantly through the 
seen hand movements (0 series) of a real figure which con- 
forms to the original visual ideal by which the whole is 
prompted. To complicate our illustration, this is what we 
finally get : — 



;, 1/, 


v", 


v'", 


etc., 


\ \ 


\ 


\ 




0, o\ 


0", 


</", 


etc., 


\ \ 


\ 


\ 




— m } 


m' 


m'' 


»"' 



etc. 

It is easy to see, therefore, that in handwriting the move- 
ments made are controlled by two different but concurring 
agencies : first, the sensations in the arm and hand must be, 
point by point, those called for by the fast associations of 
movement with letter outlines. This tendency is actually 
so strong in the young child who has learned to make a few 
figures successfully, that it draws new objects like the old 
shapes, even when they are really very different, and in spite 
of close attention to the plain copies put before them. And, 



94 Infants Movements 

second, the figure which the eye takes in as the pen point 
inscribes it, must also agree, point by point, with the outline 
figure which is held in consciousness and aimed at. 

With the further development of handwriting, the per- 
formance tends to become independent of sight. In swift 
writing we use our eyes mainly to keep on the line and on 
the paper, not to see that the letters are made properly. 
As far as we do examine them, it is only to see that they fall 
within the limits of legibility; and we know so well about 
what our hand can do, that we rarely have occasion to revise 
a word once written. The muscular series (m series) be- 
comes so delicately adjusted to the needs of the memory 
image of figure, of letter, and of word (v series), that a further 
optical test (o series) is not required. 

It is interesting to note, also, that this growing inde- 
pendence in the sensations of movement under practice and 
habit may go so far that the visual copy (v series) may be dis- 
pensed with altogether ; this is shown to be true in pathologi- 
cal cases of alexia, or inability to read, which do not involve 
agraphia, or inability to write. In these cases we have the 
extreme motor type of verbal memory, emphasized by 
Strieker: persons who remember written words by the 
memory of the sensations involved in writing them. 

A further fundamental question arises, however, when we 
come to examine the actual parallelism of the associated 
series of elements involved. How does it come about that 
the child is able to secure the agreement, term by term, 
between the elements of the v and the m series respectively 
— the agreement by which this association is established? 
How does he get v with m, v' with w', v" with m h ', in this 
regular way, and both in proper association with o, o', 0", 
etc. ? This is the question of the possibility of any adaptation 
of movements to ends, whether voluntary or not. Its dis- 



The Origin of Handwriting 95 

cussion is taken up later, 1 and in that connection the general 
principles are given by which this case may be solved with 
others. 

I need not go into the further questions of the pathology 
and abnormalities of handwriting. The kinds and varieties 
of agraphia — inability to write, from nervous lesion — are 
well classified, on the basis of impairment of one or more 
of the elements involved, by Goldscheider, in the paper 
already quoted. His explanation of mirror-writing is, 
however, so clearly a proof of the adequacy of the point 
in which his theory and mine agree, that I may briefly 
explain it. 

Mirror-writing is the form of inscription which arises 
from tracing words with the left hand by an exact redupli- 
cation of the movements of the right hand, in a symmet- 
rical way from the central point in front of the body, out 
toward the left. It produces a form of reversed writing which 
cannot be read until it is seen in a mirror. Many left-handed 
children tend to write in this way. Some adults, on taking 
a pen to write with the left hand, find they can write only in 
this way. Even those, like myself, to whom the movements 
seem, when thought of in visual terms, quite confusing and 
impossible, yet find, when they try to write with both hands 
together, in the air, from a central point right and left, that 
the left-hand mirror-writing movements are very natural 
and easy. Now, why is it? 

If a man is of the so-called 'visual' type, i.e. if he depends 
mainly on his v series, recalling, in his writing, the look of 
the letters, etc., and by comparing it with the resulting writ- 
ing, conforming his movement series to it, then any move- 

1 It is the fundamental fact of motor adjustment or 'Accommodation,' 
by 'selection from over-produced movements,' to which I give the name 
'functional selection,' as discussed below, Chap. VII. 



g6 Infant^ Movements 

ments which violate the figure presented by visual memory 
are unintelligible. Such a man must reproduce, with his 
left hand, the visual images as produced by the right. That 
is, he must write from left to right with both hands, using 
visually symmetrical images. This represents the power of 
the v series to bring the movements of both hands into con- 
formity to it. If, on the contrary, his m series has grown 
independent by practice, and he remembers written words 
not by the way they look mainly, but by the way it feels to 
write them — if he is of the so-called 'motor' type in his 
handwriting — then his left-hand writing must reproduce the 
series of muscular sensations, as his right-hand writing has 
established them. This represents the power of movements 
established by one hand to carry the other hand also with it 
in a symmetrical way. His left-hand position must dupli- 
cate at each moment his right-hand position, when he comes 
to try the experiment of writing in the air with both hands. 
This gives symmetrical movements with the two hands, 
which means mirror- writing with the left hand. 1 

The following notice and criticism of Goldscheider's paper, 
revised slightly from an earlier review 2 of it, may serve to 
show the difference between my theory and his, and at the 
same time sum up the foregoing discussion. 

Goldscheider gives first a theoretical account of the origin 
of what I have called 'tracery imitation' under the equiva- 
lent phrase malende Reproduction, endeavouring to account 
for the association between visual pictures (letters, figures, 
etc.) and the hand movements necessary to reproduce them 

1 This has been held by Fechner and others to be a strong proof that the 
discharge of energy into one side of the body tends to stimulate the corre- 
sponding members of the other side to similar movements {Miibewegungen) . 
I have mentioned already that my experiments on the infant's use of 
its hands tend to confirm this view. 

2 American Journ. of Psychology, V., 1893, 420-422. 



The Origin of Handwriting 97 

(as in drawing, writing, etc.). He finds three factors or 
'moments' in the rise of tracery imitation: 1 A, an optical 
picture of the hand movements required for making the re- 
quired figure (optische Vorstellung der Handbewegung; my 
series), derived from the child's earlier sight of his own and 
others' hand movements; B, a series of new motor dis- 
charges strengthened by practice, felt as C, a series of sensa- 
tions of actual movement, by which the discharges are regu- 
lated and controlled (motorisches Bewegungsbild; my m 
series). Moment A is clearly seen in the fact often remarked, 
that in writing with the eyes closed we still follow the pen 
point in its inscription of an optical outline. Further, in 
moment A there are two factors: first, constant memories 
(Bilder) of each position, and of each amount and direction 
of movement of the member (my m series) ; and second, 
optical presentations of the same positions and movements. 
Here we have, therefore, movements both felt and seen. 
Tracery imitation then consists in the fact that new move- 
ments are held, through the sensations they give, into con- 
formity to the series established by being both felt and seen. 
This, it is at once seen, leaves out of account altogether 
the visual figure series (my v series) established quite in- 
dependently of hand movements. Goldscheider's theory is, 
therefore, in so far inadequate, for it assumes tracery imita- 
tion, i.e. it supposes that the hand has already gone over the 
figure to be imitated, giving moment A (requisite movements 
both felt and seen). But the question remains behind this: 
How were such series selected from other movements felt as 
well as seen? How does the optical presentation of figure 
(optisches Bild des Gestaltes) get associated point by point 
with the twofold series (m series and series) represented 
by Goldscheider's moment A ? Goldscheider does not take 

1 See p. 587 of the art. cited, where he gives a resume. 

H 



98 Infant^ Movements 

account of the fact that visual recognition of figure (letters, 
pictures, etc.) is definitely established long before the child 
is able or has any tendency to try to trace them, as has been 
shown above. He is wrong, accordingly, in identifying the 
original optical figure series with the optical hand movement 
series. 

The question at issue then is : How does the purely visual 
figure series (v series) come to stimulate the two series which 
originate from the movement (m and series). My observa- 
tions show — to sum up the foregoing pages — that the 
process is as follows: As the child's experience widens, its 
optical perception of figure grows exact, so that certain 
retinal or eye movement series grow more and more fixed. 
At this -period the arm and hand movement series, at first 
few and fixed, are broken up with the increasing mobility 
of the member. Consequently, (1) from the arm movement 
sensations those elements are emphasized which represent 
movements seen as well as felt, and (2) from the latter those 
are further emphasized which produce results identical with 
elements in certain definite figure series already established 
by the eye. This reproduction of visual figure elements, by 
movements which are both seen and felt, establishes firmly 
the association between the movement sensations (m series) 
and the figure presentations (v series), and the optical 
memories of the hand movements (0 series) tend to fall 
away. 

The validity of this analysis as opposed to that of Gold- 
scheider rests then upon the evidence that the child has a 
sense of figure established first by vision alone. Several 
points may be cited in support of this view: 1. The child 
recognizes letters, pictures, etc., before it is able to trace 
them or speak their equivalents. 2. We can trace figures 
by movements of the head, foot, trunk, etc., — movements 



The Origin of Handwriting 99 

which we cannot see. If our sense of figure is independent 
of any particular thing that moves, it is easy to see how this 
is possible. If, on the contrary, the sense of figure is derived 
entirely from movements both felt and seen, it is difficult to 
see how such accomplishments are to be accounted for. 
3. In memories of actual writing, for example, my auto- 
graph, I, for one, picture clearly the way the letters look as 
they are left by the pen on the paper, and also the sensa- 
tions of movement in the hand and arm: but hardly at all 
the way the hand or pen movements look at the successive 
stages of the signature. 4. In the case of writing, a blind 
man has no series corresponding to the look of the actual 
movements to those who see : he writes by the association 
between his movement sensations and the touch figure series 
which corresponds to the visual figure series of the man who 
sees. 1 5. In another analogous case, the child's learning to 
speak, there are only two elements, the auditory series, in 
the case, we will say, of the gutturals, which infants some- 
times learn first, and the sound series which results from 
the child's own voice (omitting the movement sensations 
which are not in question) ; there is no hearing of the move- 
ments of speech in addition to the hearing of the sounds 
spoken, i.e. nothing at all corresponding to Goldscheider's 
optical hand movement series, considered as distinct from 
the resulting visual figure series. In hearing, accordingly, 
the auditory sound 'copy' series corresponds to my visual 
figure 'copy' series. 

1 Cf. Broadbent's remarks on the writing of the blind, Brit. Med. Journ., 
1876, I., p. 435. 

LOFC, 



CHAPTER VI 

Suggestion 
§ i. General Definition 

The rise of hypnotism in late years has opened the way 
to an entirely new method of mental study. The doctrine 
of reflexes was before largely physiological, and only patho- 
logical cases could be cited in evidence of a mechanism in 
certain forms of consciousness as well as out of it ; and even 
pathological cases of extreme sensitiveness to casual sugges- 
tion from the environment or from other men did not receive 
the interpretation which the phenomena of hypnotic sugges- 
tion are now making possible, i.e. that suggestion by idea, 
or through consciousness, must be recognized to be as funda- 
mental a kind of motor stimulus as the direct excitation of a 
sense organ. Nervous reflexes may work directly through 
states of consciousness, or be stimulated by them; these 
states of consciousness may be integral portions of such 
reflexes ; and, further, a large part of our mental life is made 
up of a mass of such ideo-motor ' suggestions/ which are 
normally in a state of subconscious inhibition. 

Without discussing the nature of the hypnotic state in the 
first instance, nor venturing to pass judgment in this connec- 
tion upon the question whether the suggestion theory is suffi- 
cient to explain all the facts, we may yet isolate the aspect 
spoken of above, and discuss its general bearings in the 
normal life, especially of children. Of course, the question 



General Definition 101 

at once occurs, is the normal life a life to any degree of ideo- 
motor or suggestive reactions, or is the hypnotic sleep in this 
aspect of it, quite an artificial thing? Further, if such sug- 
gestion is normal or typical in the mental life, what is the 
nature of the inhibition by which it is ordinarily kept under 
— in other words, what is its relation to what we call will? 
Leaving this second question altogether unanswered for the 
present, 1 it has occurred to me to observe children, especially 
my own H. and E., during their first two years, to see if light 
could be thrown upon the first inquiry above. If it be true 
that ideo-motor suggestion is a normal thing, then early 
child life should present the most striking analogies to the 
hypnotic state in this essential respect. This is a field that 
has hitherto, as far as I know, been largely unexplored by 
workers in the psychology of suggestion. 

It is not necessary, I think, to discuss in detail the mean- 
ing of this much-abused but, in the main, very well defined 
word, ' suggestion.' The general conception may be suffi- 
ciently well indicated for the present by the following quota- 
tions from authorities. They all agree on the main phe- 
nomenon, their definitions differing in the place of emphasis, 
according as one aspect rather than another supplies ground 
for a theory. I may gather them up in my own definition, 
which aims to describe the fundamental fact apart from 
theory, and is therefore better suited to our preliminary ex- 
position. I have myself defined suggestion as "from the 
side of consciousness ... the tendency of a sensory or an 
ideal state to be followed by a motor state, 2 in the manner 
typified by the abrupt entrance from without into con- 
sciousness of an idea or image, or a vaguely conscious stimu- 

1 See, however, Chap. XIII., below. 

2 Science, Feb. 27, 1891, where many of the observations given in this 
chapter were first recorded. 



102 Suggestion 

lation, which tends to bring about the muscular or volitional 
effects which ordinarily follow upon its presence. " * 

Janet defines suggestion as "a motor reaction brought 
about by language or perception." 2 This narrows the field 
to certain classes of stimulations, well defined in conscious- 
ness, and overlooks the more subtle suggestive influences 
emphasized by the Nancy school of theorizers. Schmidkunz 
makes it: "die Herbeirufung eines Ereignisses durch die 
Erweckung seines psychischen Bildes." 3 This again makes 
a mental picture of the suggested 'event' in consciousness 
necessary, and, besides, does not rule out ordinary complex 
associations. It neglects the requirement insisted upon by 
Janet, i.e. that the stimulus be from without, as from hear- 
ing words, seeing actions, objects, etc. Wundt says: "Sug- 
gestion ist Association mit gleichzeitiger Verengerung des 
Bewusstseins auf die durch die Association angeregten Vor- 
stellungen." 4 In this definition Wundt meets the objection 
urged against the definition of suggestion in terms of com- 
plex association, by holding down the association to a 'nar- 
rowed consciousness ' ; but he, again, neglects the outward 
nature of the stimulus, and does not give an adequate account 
of how this narrowing of consciousness upon one or two asso- 
ciated terms, usually a sensori-motor association, is brought 
about. Ziehen: "In der Beibringung der Vorstellung liegt 
das Wesen der Suggestion." 5 Here we have the sufficient 
recognition of the artificial and external source of the stimu- 
lation, but yet we surely cannot say that all such stimulations 
succeed in getting suggestive force. A thousand things sug- 
gested to us are rejected, scorned, laughed at. This is so 
marked a fact in current theory, especially on the pathological 

1 Cf. also Handbook of Psychology, II., 297. 

3 Aut. Psych., p. 218. * Hypnotismus u. Suggestion, II. Abs. 

3 Psych, der Suggestion. 8 Philos. Momtshefte, XXIX., 1893, p. 489. 



General Defatition 103 

side, that I have found it convenient to use a special phrase 
for consciousness when in the purely suggestible condition, 
i.e. ' reactive consciousness/ 1 The phrase 'conscious re- 
flex' is sometimes used, but is not good as applied to these 
suggestive reactions; for they are cortical in their brain 
seat, and are not as definite as ordinary reflexes. 

For our present purposes, the definition just given from 
my earlier work is sufficient, since it emphasizes the move- 
ment side of suggestion. The fundamental fact about all 
suggestion, — not hypnotic suggestion alone, which some of 
the definitions which I have cited have exclusive reference 
to, 2 — is, in my view, the removal of inhibitions to move- 
ment brought about by a certain condition of consciousness 
which may be called ' suggestibility. ' The further question, 
what makes consciousness suggestible, is open to some de- 
bate. There are two general statements — not to elaborate 
a theory here, however — which are not done justice to by 
any of the current theories. We may say, first, that a sug- 
gestible consciousness is one in which the ordinary criteria of 
belief are in abeyance ; the coefficients of reality, to use the 
terms of an earlier discussion of belief, 3 are no longer appre- 
hended. Consciousness finds all presentations of equal value, 
in terms of uncritical reality-feeling. It accordingly responds 
to them all, each in turn, readily and equally. Second : this 
state of things is due primarily to a violent reaction or fixa- 
tion of attention, resulting in its usual monoideism, or 'nar- 
rowing of consciousness.' For belief is a motor attitude 
resting upon complexity of presentation and representation. 
Just as soon as this mature complexity is destroyed, belief 

1 Handbook of Psychology, Feeling and Will, pp. 60 S., and Chap. XII. 

a See the section below in this chapter (§ 7) in which the main facts of 
hypnosis are briefly stated, and the further references to the theory of hypno- 
tism in § 3 of the chapter on Volition, below. 

3 Handbook, II., Chap. VII. 



104 Suggestion 

disappears, and all ideas ' become free and equal ' in doing 
their executive work. Each presentation streams out in 
action by suggestion ; and stands itself fully in the possession 
of consciousness, with none of the pros and cons of its usual 
claim to be accepted as real, gaining also the still greater 
establishment which comes from the return wave upon itself 
of its own motor discharge. The question of suggestion be- 
comes then that of the mechanism of attention in working 
three results: (i) the narrowing of consciousness upon the 
suggested idea, (2) the consequent narrowing of the motor 
impulses to simpler lines of discharge, and (3) the consequent 
inhibition of the discriminating and selective attitude which 
constitutes belief in reality. 

The truth of these general statements is thoroughly con- 
firmed by the observation of children, in whom the general 
system of adjustments, which constitute the 'worlds of 
reality 5 of us adults, are not yet effected. Little children 
are credulous, in an unreflective sense, even to illusion. 
Tastes, colours, sensations generally, pains, pleasures, may 
be suggested to them, as is shown by the instances given in 
later pages. 

It is, however, to the truth of the fundamental fact of 
normal motor suggestion found in children, that I wish to 
devote a large part of this chapter; and observations of re- 
actions clearly due to such suggestion, either under natural 
conditions or by experiment, lead me to distinguish the varying 
sorts of suggestion mentioned in the following paragraphs, in 
what I find to be about the order of their appearance in 
child -life. 

§ 2. Physiological Suggestion 

By 'suggestion' is understood ordinarily ideal or ideo- 
motor suggestion, — the origination from without of a motor 



Physiological Suggestion 105 

reaction, by producing in consciousness the state which is 
ordinarily antecedent to that reaction; but observation of 
an infant for the first month or six weeks of its life leads to 
the conviction that its life is mainly physiological. The 
vacancy of consciousness as regards anything not immedi- 
ately given as sensation, principally pleasure and pain, pre- 
cludes the possibility of ideal suggestion as such. The infant 
at this age has no ideas in the sense of distinct memory 
images. Its conscious states are largely affective. Accord- 
ingly, when the reactions which are purely reflex, and certain 
random impulsive movements, are excluded, we seem to ex- 
haust the contents of its motor consciousness. 

Yet even at this remarkably early s age H. was found to 
be in a degree receptive of suggestion, — suggestion conveyed 
by repeated stimulation under uniform conditions. In the 
first place, the suggestions of sleep began to tell upon her 
before the end of the first month. Her nurse put her to sleep 
by laying her face down and patting gently upon the end of 
her spine. This position itself soon became not only sug- 
gestive to the child of sleep, but sometimes necessary to sleep, 
even when she was laid across the nurse's lap in what seemed 
to be an uncomfortable position. 

This case illustrates what I mean by physiological sugges- 
tion. It shows the law of physiological habit as it borders 
on the conscious. No doubt some such effect would be 
produced by pure habit apart from consciousness ; but, con- 
sciousness being present, its nascent indefinite states may be 
supposed to have a quality of suggestiveness, which works 
to increase the fixedness of the habit. Yet the fact of such 
a colouring of consciousness in connection with the growth 
of physiological habit is important rather as a transition to 
more evident suggestion. 

The same kind of phenomena appear also in adult life. 



106 Suggestion 

Positions given to the limbs of a sleeper lead to movements 
ordinarily associated with these positions. The sleeper 
defends himself, withdraws himself from cold, etc. Chil- 
dren learn gradually the reactions upon conditions of posi- 
tion, lack of support, etc., of the body, necessary to keep 
from falling out of bed, which adults have so perfectly. All 
secondary automatic reactions may be classed here, the sen- 
sations coming from one reaction, as in walking, being sug- 
gestions to the next movement, unconsciously acted upon. 
The state of consciousness at any stage in the chain of move- 
ments, if present at all, must be similar to the baby's in the 
case above, — a mere internal glimmering, whose reproduc- 
tion, however brought about, reinforces its appropriate re- 
action. 

The most we can say of such physiological suggestion is, 
that the conscious state is always present, and that the 
ordinary reflexes may be subsequently abbreviated and 
modified. 

Professor Ribot says as much as this. "When a physio- 
logical state has become a state of consciousness, through 
this very fact it has acquired a particular character. . . . 
It has become a new factor in the psychic life of the indi- 
vidual — a result that can serve as a starting-point to some 
new (either conscious or unconscious) work." And again: 
"Volition is a state of consciousness ... it marks a series, 
i.e. the possibility of being recommenced, modified, pre- 
vented. Nothing similar exists in regard to automatic acts 
that are not accompanied by consciousness. . . . Each state 
of consciousness ... in relation to the future development 
of the individual, is a factor of the first order." * Schneider, 

1 Diseases of Personality, pp. 15-16. Ribot in his text, however, notes 
mainly the phylogenetic advantage of consciousness as memory, on which see 
below, Chap. IX., § 3, and Chap. X., §§ 2, 4. 



Physiological Suggestion 107 

also, writing from the phylogenetic point of view, says: "All 
purely physiological movements serve a single definite pur- 
pose, are always the same; psychological movements, on 
the contrary, have the peculiarity that they serve different 
purposes, follow upon quite different stimulations, and adapt 
themselves to circumstances by combination and modifica- 
tion. . . . Otherwise we would not have any consciousness, 
for there would be no use for it. . . . So in connection with 
every movement which is accompanied by a phenomenon of 
consciousness, we may hold, that this phenomenon of con- 
sciousness is really necessary (wirklich n'oihig ist) for the 
determination of the movement." * A more positive pro- 
nouncement on the presence of consciousness in all reactions 
to which the term 'suggestion' may be applied is that of 
Moll. He says: "There is no suggestion without conscious- 
ness. It makes no difference whether the suggestion is made 
through imitation or by a command. ... I must insist in 
opposition to Mendel that there is consciousness of what is 
suggested, and that this is the main point in the matter. A 
suggestion without consciousness is to me inconceivable." 2 

In hypnotic experimentation, the influence of such sub- 
conscious or physiological suggestions is now generally recog- 
nized under the general doctrine of hyperesthesia of the 
senses. Ochorowicz calls the general phenomenon of sug- 
gestion ideoplasty? and when no clear idea is necessary to 
the effect, as in my 'physiological' suggestion, he speaks of 
'physical ideoplasty.' He says: "We have ideoplasty when- 
ever the thought alone of any functional modification de- 
termines such functional modification ... the thought of 
yawning itself produces yawning, etc." 4 

1 Der thierische Wille, p. 53. 2 Hypnotism, p. 267 (italics his). 
8 Ochorowicz, Mental Suggestion, p. 25. (So the translator; 'idioplasy' 
is perhaps better.) * Ibid. 354-5. 



108 Suggestion 

A particular observation made upon my child E. during 
her second year may serve to make clear this first stage of 
suggestion. She learned to go to sleep sucking her bottle, 
the rubber of which was left in her mouth while she slept. 
Now, at any sound, touch, or other sudden stimulation, such 
as the flaring up of the light, she began with more or less 
vigour to suck the bottle, giving no other sign of awaking 
whatever, and really not awaking, but only passing from a 
deeper sleep, or less consciousness, to a lighter sleep, or 
more consciousness. Now, as I interpret it, the stimulus, 
arousing more brain process, heightened the sleep or dream 
consciousness, brought out the sensations in the lips about 
the rubber, and these sensations by physiological suggestion 
set up the sucking movements. These movements in turn 
had their habitual influence in sending the child off into 
deep sleep again. Then, later, it is probable that even the 
lip sensations were not necessary; but the increased dyna- 
mogeny of the increased sensory consciousness simply poured 
itself into the lip-movement channels, since they were asso- 
ciated last and always with the conditions of sleep. 

Lie*bault was brought to recognize this phenomenon by 
the possibility of suggesting purely physical functions suc- 
cessfully to very young children. 1 

We may adopt a diagrammatic representation of the ele- 
ments of a motor reaction at this point for convenience, call- 
ing it the 'motor square.' Figure IX. presents a square of 
which each corner represents a physiological process, as it 
may occur with or without consciousness, as follows : — 

Let sg= suggestion (sensory process); mp =seat of motor 
process; mt= movement of muscle; mc= consciousness of 
movement (kinesthetic process). The sides of the square 

1 See illustrative cases given in earlier editions of the work, pp. 113 f., and 
also in Ochorowicz, loc. cit., p. 247 (with his context). 



Physiological Suggestion 109 

are connections between the seats of these processes. The 
relation of the elements of the 'motor square' to other cere- 





Fig. IX. — ' Motor Square.' Fig. X. — Physiological Suggestion. 

bral elements, and the relation of this scheme to others pro- 
posed by Lichtheim, Kussmaul, etc., are spoken of later. 1 

The stimulus sg (Fig. X., in which crosses at the corners 
indicate nervous processes only, and circles indicate vague 
states of consciousness) starts the motor process mp; it leads 
to movement, mt, which is reported to consciousness, mc. 
The line between sg and mc is broken, because at this stage 
in infancy, associations are only just beginning to be formed 
between a feeling of muscular movement and its stimulating 
sensation. 

The cases of 'physiological suggestion,' as now described, 2 
tend, inasmuch as they involve elements of consciousness, to 
take more definite form, as ' sensori-motor suggestions,' to 
which we may now turn. 

§ 3. Sensori-motor Suggestion 

These cases of suggestion may again be best illustrated 
from the phenomena of infancy, before a close definition is 
attempted. And first we may note some instances of what 
may be called general suggestions of this sort. 

1 Below, Chap. XIII., § 3. 

2 Among confirmatory observations sent me, those of A. G. Parrott, of 
Farmington, Conn., are varied and careful. 



no Suggestion 

I. General. — Various Sleep Suggestions. — From the first 
month on, there was a deepening of the hold upon the child 
H. of the early method of inducing sleep. The nurse, in 
the meantime, added two nursery rhymes. Thus position, 
pats, and rhyme sounds were the suggesting stimuli. Not 
until the third month, however, was there any difference 
noticed when the same suggestions came from other persons. 
I myself learned, during the fourth month, to put her to sleep, 
and learned with great difficulty, though pursuing the nurse's 
method as nearly as possible. Here, therefore, was a sleep 
suggestion from the personality of the nurse, — her peculiar 
voice, touch, etc., — of which mention is made more fully 
below. At this time I assumed exclusive charge of putting 
H. to sleep, in order to observe the phenomena more closely. 
For a month or six weeks I made regular improvement, 
reducing the time required from three-quarters of an hour 
to half an hour, finding it easier at night than at midday. 
This indicated that darkness had already become an addi- 
tional sleep suggestion, probably because it shut out the 
whole class of sensations from sight, thus reducing the atten- 
tion to stimulations which were monotonous. 1 

In the following month (sixth), I reduced the time re- 
quired, day or night, to about a quarter of an hour, on an 
average. In this way I found it possible to send her off to 
sleep at any hour of the night that she might wake and cry out. 

1 I found by accident, in this connection, the curious fact that a single flash 
of bright light would often put H. immediately to sleep when all other pro- 
cesses were futile. In her fifth month I despaired one evening, after nearly an 
hour's vain effort, and lighted the gas at a brilliant flash unintentionally. She 
closed her eyes by the usual reflex, and did not open them again, sleeping 
soundly and long. I afterwards resorted to this method on several occasions, 
carefully shielding her eyes from the direct light rays, and it generally, but 
not always, succeeded. Shortly after reporting this in the columns of Science 
(Feb. 27, 1891), I heard from a prominent psychologist that his wife could 
confirm the observation from experience with her own children. 



Sensori-motor Suggestion 1 1 1 

I then determined to omit the patting, and endeavour to 
bring on sleep by singing only. The time was at first 
lengthened, then greatly shortened. I now found it pos- 
sible (sixth to seventh month) to put her to sleep, when she 
waked in the dark, by a simple refrain repeated monoto- 
nously two or three times. In the meantime she was develop- 
ing active attention, and resisted all endeavours of her nurse 
and mother, who had been separated from her through ill- 
ness, very stubbornly for hours, while she would go to sleep 
for myself, even when most restless, in from fifteen to thirty 
minutes. This result required sometimes firm holding down 
of the infant and a determined expression of countenance. 

At the end of the year, this treatment being regular, she 
would voluntarily throw herself in the old position at a 
single word from me, and go to sleep, if only patted uni- 
formly, in from four to ten minutes. This continued through 
the second year ; even when she was so restless that her nurse 
was unable to keep her from gaining her feet, and when she 
screamed if forced by her to lie down. The sight of myself 
was sufficient to make her quiet ; and in five minutes, rarely 
more, she was sound asleep. I found it of service, when she 
was teething and in pain, to be able thus to give her quiet, 
healthful sleep. 

This illustrates, I think, as conclusively as could be desired, 
the passage of purely physiological over into sensory sugges- 
tion; and this is all that I care, in this connection, to em- 
phasize. 

Food and Clothing Suggestion. — H. gave unmistakable 
signs of response to the sight of her food-bottle as early, at 
least, as the fourth month, probably a fortnight earlier. The 
reactions were a kind of general movement toward the bottle, 
especially with the hands, a brightening of the face, and crow- 
ing sounds. It is curious that the rubber on the bottle seemed 



112 Suggestion 

to be the point of identification, the bottle being generally not 
responded to when the rubber was removed. This was also 
true of E., to whom the rubber alone without the bottle be- 
came a remarkable quieting agent, as I have already men- 
tioned. The sight of the bottle, also, was suggestive much 
earlier than the touch of it with her hands. 

H. began to show a vague sense of the use of her articles 
of clothing about the fifth month, responding at the proper 
time, when being clothed, by ducking her head, extending 
her hand or withdrawing it. About this time she also 
showed signs of joy at the appearance of her mittens, hood, 
and cloak, before going out. 

II. Suggestions of Personality. — It was a poet, no doubt, 
who first informed us that the infant inherits a peculiar sen- 
sibility for its mother's face, — a readiness to answer it with 
a smile. This is all poetic fancy. It is true that the infant 
does smile very early ; E. clearly smiled at me on her seventh 
day and at her mother on the ninth. But it is probably a 
purely reflex indication of agreeable organic sensation. When 
the child does begin to show partiality for mother or nurse, it 
is because the kind treatment it has already experienced in 
connection with the face has already brought out the same 
smile before in this organic way; the mother's face, that is, 
grows to suggest the smile. At first it is not the face alone, 
but the personality, the presence, to which the child responds ; 
and of more special suggestion, the voice is first effectual, 
then touch, as in the case of sleep above, and then sight. 
Such suggestions are among the most important of infancy, 
serving as elements in the growth of the consciousness of 
self and of external reality, as we shall have occasion to see 
later on. 

Delaying for the moment the further analysis of this re- 
markable class of suggestions, the question occurs, are not 



Sensori-motor Suggestion 1 1 3 

these so-called ' suggestions ' simply cases of the association 
of ideas ? I think we are warranted in answering, ' No ' ; 
for the reason that it is not an associated idea that is brought 
up; unless we are prepared to enlarge the ordinary concep- 
tion of association to include phenomena of the vaguest 
psychological meaning. The muscular movement is produced 
without the production of an idea of that movement, largely 
through native pathways of discharge, or by the production 
of organic conditions, such as sleep, which involve muscular 
conditions. Can we say that the sleep suggestions first bring 
up an idea or image of the sleep condition, or that the bottle 
brings up an idea of the movements of grasping, or even of 
the sweet taste? I think the case is more direct. The 
energy of stimulation passes over into the motor reaction 
through the medium of the conscious state; although the 
conscious state is undoubtedly enveloped in an envelope or 
fringe of organic and muscular sensation which is of marked 
hedonic quality. Further, as will appear clearer below, it is 
not an association plus a suggestion, or an association plus 
an association, as current atomistic doctrines of association 
would lead us to expect. We cannot say that pleasure or 
pain always intervenes between the present state of con- 
sciousness and the motor reaction, i.e. mother's face, pleas- 
ure recalled, expression of pleasure, or present bottle, sweet 
taste, movements to reach. I believe all this is quite artificial 
and unnatural. The most that can be said is that the con- 
scious state as a whole, with its hedonic colouring, serves to 
bring about a modification of the reaction, whether it be a 
native one, or one established by association or habit. 1 

The elements are as before for physiological suggestion, 
except that the reaction begins with a clearly conscious 

1 Ochorowicz describes the same class of phenomena as 'ideorganic 
associations based on habitude,' Mental Suggestion, p. 232. 

I 



H4 Suggestion 

process at sg (Fig. XL), and the child is getting associations 
between sg and mc. 

The phenomenon of 'personality-suggestion/ to which we 
may now return, is so important in the growth of the child's 
consciousness of himself, of his belief in realities about him, 
and of his social life, that it should be closely scrutinized. 
This is the more important because such an analysis has 
never been made upon the basis of actual observation of 
children. The treatment which follows is based upon most 




Fig. XL — Sensori-motor Suggestion 

detailed and watchful inspection of H. and E., together 
with careful but less intimate observation of two other young 
children, one of them a boy, with especial reference to the 
development of the sense of their own relation to the per- 
sons who moved about them. 1 

As outcome of this kind of observation, and with no inter- 
mixture of interpretation, which may be now left over, I find 
no less than four phases of attitude involved in what after- 
wards becomes the so-called 'social sense' in the child. I 
say ' afterwards becomes,' because all of them belong in the 
' projective ' 2 stage of the child's sense of self, i.e. they all 
go to furnish data which he afterwards appropriates to him- 
self as ' subject.' These four phases are indescribably subtle 

1 Some observations on the presence of something similar to this class of 
suggestions in animals have already been given above, Chap. I., § 3. 

2 See above, Chap. I., § 3. 



Sens ori-mo tor Suggestion 115 

and indescribably intermixed in the subjective ensemble of 
the growing child. So much so that I shall not attempt in 
all cases to cite actual situations to justify each point : rather, 
the view I take rests upon innumerable situations, and their 
differences from one another. Just as one is utterly unable 
to give examples of his own phases of attitude expressive of 
the nuances of meaning which the actions of others bring 
out of him, so entirely a matter of insight and intuition 
must his sense be of what is in the child's mind in the various 
social situations which confront him from day to day. Never- 
theless, the drift of the infant's development is very clear to 
the sympathetic observer; and I think the instances which I 
cite will be sufficient to excite in all those familiar with little 
children a sense of the truth of the general portrayal. 

i. The first thing in the environment of the infant which 
it notes — apart from the ordinary fixed and static stimula- 
tions, such as sounds, lights, etc. — are movements. The 
first attempts of the infant at anything like steady attention 
are directed to moving things — a swaying curtain, a moving 
light, a stroking touch, etc. And further than this, the 
moving things soon become more than objects of curiosity; 
these things are just the things that affect him for pleasure 
or pain. It is movement that brings him his food, movement 
that regulates the stages of his bath, movement that dresses 
him comfortably, movement that sings to him and rocks him 
to sleep. In that complex of sensations, the nurse, the fea- 
ture of moment to him, of immediate satisfaction, or redemp- 
tion from pain, is this: movements come to succour him. 
Change in his bodily feeling is the vital requirement of his 
life, for by it the rhythm of his vegetative existence is se- 
cured; and these changes are accompanied and secured 
always in the moving presence of the one he sees and feels 
about him. This, I take it, is the first and great association 



1 1 6 Suggestion 

of the infant with other persons, the earliest reflection in his 
consciousness of the world of personalities about him. At 
this stage his 'personality-suggestion' is this pain-movement- 
pleasure psychosis: to this he reacts with a smile, and a 
crow, and a kick. 1 

Many facts tend to bear us out in this position. My 
child cried when I handled her in the dark, although I 
imitated the nurse's movements as closely as possible. She 
tolerated a strange presence as long as it remained quietly 
in its place : but let it move, and especially let it usurp any 
of the pieces of movement-business of the nurse or mother, 
and her protests were emphatic. The movements tended to 
bring the strange elements of a new face into the vital asso- 
ciation, pain-movement-pleasure, and so to disturb its 
familiar course : this constituted it a strange { personality. ' 

It is astonishing, also, what new accidental elements may 
become parts of this association. Part of a movement, a 
gesture, a peculiar habit of the nurse, may become sufficient 
to give assurance of the welcome presence and the pleasures 
which the presence brings. Two notes of my song in the 
night stood for my presence to H., and no song from any 
one else could replace it. A lighted match stopped the cry- 
ing of E. for food, 2 although it was but a signal for a process 
of food-preparation lasting several minutes: and a simple 
light never stopped her crying under any other circumstances. 
So with this first start in the sense of personality we find also 
reasons for the differences of different personalities ; but this 
constitutes the next phase. 

2. It is evident that the sense of another's presence thus 

1 Undoubtedly this association gets some of its value from the other similar 
one in which the movements are the infant's own. It is by movement that 
he gets rid of pain and secures pleasure. 

2 Observations made in her fourteenth week. 



.1 



Sensori-motor Suggestion 117 

felt in the infant's consciousness rests, as all associations 
rest, upon regularity or repetition: his sense of expectancy 
is aroused whenever the chain of events is started. And this 
is embodied at this stage largely in two indications : the face 
and the voice. 1 But it is easy to see that this is a very meagre 
sense of personality ; a moving machine which brought pain 
and alleviated suffering would serve as well. So the child 
begins to learn in addition the fact that persons are in a 
measure individual in their treatment of him, and hence that 
personality has elements of uncertainty or irregularity about 
it. This growing sense is very clear to one who watches an 
infant in its second half-year. Sometimes its mother gives a 
biscuit, but sometimes she does not. Sometimes the father 
smiles and tosses the child; sometimes he does not. And 
the child looks for signs of these varying moods and methods 
of treatment. Its new pains of disappointment arise directly 
on the basis of that former sense of regular personal presence 
upon which its expectancy went forth. 

This new element of the child's l social sense' becomes, at 
one period of its development, quite the controlling element. 
Its action in the presence of the persons of the household 
becomes hesitating and watchful. Especially does it watch 
the face for any expressive indications of what treatment is 
to be expected ; for facial expression is now the most regular 
as well as the most delicate indication. It is unable to antici- 
pate the treatment in detail, and it has not of course learned 
any principles of interpretation of the conduct of mother or 
father lying deeper than the details. It is just here, I think, 
that imitation arises, as will appear later, 2 and becomes so 

1 I have special observations on H.'s responses to changes in facial expres- 
sion up to the age of twenty months. Her changes of attitude indicated most 
subtle sensibility to these differences — and normal children all do, I think. 
Animals show the same remarkable 'projective intuition,' if the expression be 
allowed. 3 Below, Chap. XI., § 3. 



1 1 8 Suggestion 

important in the child's life. This is imitation's opportunity. 
The infant waits to see how others act, because its own weal 
and woe depends upon this ' how ' ; and inasmuch as it 
knows not what to anticipate, its mind is open to every sug- 
gestion of movement. Its attention dwells upon details, and 
by the regular principle of motor reaction which imitation 
expresses, it acts these suggestions out. 

All through the child's second year, and longer, his sense 
of the persons around him is in this stage. The incessant 
'why?' with which he greets any action affecting him, or 
any information given him, is witness to the simple puzzle 
of the apparent capriciousness of persons. Of course he 
cannot understand 'why': so the simple fact to him is that 
mamma will or won't, he knows not beforehand which. 

But in all this period there is germinating in his conscious- 
ness — and this very uncertainty is an important element of 
it — the seed of a far-reaching thought. His sense of per- 
sons — moving, pleasure-or-pain-giving, uncertain but self- 
directing, persons — is now to become a sense of agency, of 
power, which is yet not the power of the regular-moving 
door on its hinges or the rhythmic swinging of the pendulum 
of the clock. The sense of personal actuation, 'projective 
agency,' is now forming, and it again is potent for still further 
development of the social consciousness. For he begins to 
grow capricious himself, and to feel that he can be so when- 
ever he likes. Suggestion begins to lose the regularity of its 
working ; or to become negative and ' contrary ' in its effects. 
At this period it is that obedience begins to grow hard, and 
its meaning begins to dawn upon the child as the great 
reality. It means the subjection of his own agency, his own 
liberty to be capricious, to the agency and liberty of some 
one else. 

3. With all this, the child's distinction between and among 



Sensori-motor Suggestion 119 

the persons who constantly come into contact with him 
grows on apace, in spite of the element of irregularity of the 
general fact of personality. As before he learned the differ- 
ence between one presence and another, — a difference 
which was overcome in the discovery that every presence 
is of irregular value; so now he learns the difference 
between one character and another — the regularity of per- 
sonal agency, as opposed to the regularity of mere associa- 
tions of movement and to the irregularity of the apparently 
capricious. Every character is more or less regular in its 
irregularity. It has its tastes and modes of action, its tem- 
perament and type of command. This the child learns late 
in the second year and thereafter. He behaves differently 
when the father is in the room. He is quick to obey one 
person, slow to obey another. He cries aloud, pulls his 
companions, and behaves reprehensibly generally, when no 
adult is present but his nurse, who has no authority to 
punish him. This stage in his ' knowledge of man ' leads to 
those active differences of conduct on his part which make 
imitation, and the discipline of obedience, a sword with two 
edges, one for good and one for evil. This general apprecia- 
tion of character, together with the full-blown social feeling, 
which constitutes the fourth phase in my division, may be 
left for later discussion, as well as the part played by this 
kind of suggestion in the genesis of the moral sense. 1 

To sum up: 'personality-suggestion' is the general term 
for the stimulations to activity which the child gets from 
persons. It develops through three or four roughly dis- 
tinguished ' stages,' all of which illustrate what I have called 
his 'projective' sense of personality; namely, 1. a bare dis- 
tinction, on the ground of peculiar pain-movement-pleasure 
complexes, of persons from things; 2. a sense of the irregu- 

1 Below, Chap. XI., § 3. 



1 20 Suggestion 

larity or capriciousness of the behaviour of these persons, 
which is the germ of his sense of agency, as opposed to the 
regular causal series of conditions which things go through; 
3. his distinction, vaguely felt but reacted to with great 
exactness, between the characteristic modes of behaviour or 
personal character of different persons; 4. after his sense of 
his own subject-agency arises by a process of imitation, he 
gets what is really social feeling : the sense of others as 
'ejective,' that is, as like and equal to himself. 1 

III. Deliberative Suggestion. — By ' deliberative sugges- 
tion' I mean a state of mind in which co-ordinate sense-stimuli 
meet, confront, oppose, further, one another. Yet I do not 
mean 'deliberation' in the full-blown volitional sense, but 
suggestion that appears deliberative, while still inside the re- 
active consciousness and still representing a single reaction 
upon a single state of consciousness. In real deliberation, 
as appears below, there are two or more pictured alternatives, 
upon the conscious co-ordination of which action follows. 
But here the different elements are ingredients in a single 
sensory complex, — one suggestion, — and the motor re- 
action waits upon the issue of the whole. The competition 
of processes is probably in large measure subcortical. So 
the state is still to be classed as sensori-motor, not ideo-motor, 
since it does not require intelligent memory and representa- 
tion. The last three months of the child's first year are, I 

1 The reader may notice in this connection the section below on 'bashful- 
ness,' which is found to be a native organic response to the presence of per- 
sons, considered as 'projects' of a personal kind. It is curious to note that 
besides general gregariousness which many animals show in common, they 
have in many instances special sense indications of the presence of creatures of 
their own kind or of other kinds. Dogs and cats each recognize both dogs and 
cats by smell. Horses seem to be guided by sight. Fowls are notoriously 
blind to shapes of fowls, but depend on the cries which they hear of their kind 
or their young. Experiments seem to show that many of these responses 
are probably not congenital. (See Morgan, Habit and Instinct.) 



Sensori-motor Suggestion 121 

think, clearly given over to this kind of consciousness. Motor 
stimulations have multiplied, the emotional life is budding 
forth in a variety of promising traits, the material of con- 
scious character is present ; but the ■ ribs ' of mental structure 
may still be seen through, response answering to appeal in a 
complex but yet mechanical way. The child lacks self -con- 
sciousness, self -decision, self in any developed form. 

As an illustration of what I mean, I may record the follow- 
ing case of deliberative suggestion from H.'s thirteenth 
month: it was more instructive to me than whole books 
would be on the theory of the conflict of impulses. When 
about eight months old, H. formed the peculiar habit of 
suddenly scratching the face of her nurse or mother with her 
nails. It became fixed in her memory, probably because of 
the unusual facial expression of pain, reproof, etc., which 
followed it, until the close proximity of any one's face was 
sufficient suggestion to her to give it a violent scratch. In 
order to break up this habit, I began to punish her by taking 
at once the hand with which she scratched and 'snapping' 
her fingers with my own first finger hard enough to be pain- 
ful. For about four weeks this seemed to have no effect, 
probably because I only saw her a small part of the time, 
and only then did she suffer the punishment. But I then 
observed, and those who were with her most reported, that 
she only scratched once at a time, and grew very solemn and 
quiet for some moments afterwards, as if thinking deeply; 
and soon after this climax was reached she would scratch 
once impulsively, be punished, and weep profusely, then 
become as grave as a deacon, looking me in the face. 
I would then deliberately put my cheek very close to 
her, and she would sit gazing at it in 'deep thought' for two 
or even three minutes, hardly moving a muscle the whole 
time, and then either suddenly scratch my face and be 



122 Suggestion 

punished again, or turn to something (noise, object, watch- 
chain, etc.) which I was careful enough to provide in order 
to aid her by drawing off the attention. Having scratched, 
she began to cry, in anticipation of the punishment. Gradu- 
ally the scratching became more rare. She seldom yielded to 
the temptation after being punished, and so the habit entirely 
disappeared. I may add that her mother and myself en- 
deavoured to induce a different reaction by taking the child's 
other hand and with it stroking the face which she had 
scratched. This movement in time replaced the other com- 
pletely, and the soft stroking became one of her most spon- 
taneous expressions of affection. 1 

Now the first act of scratching was probably accidental, 
one of the spontaneous reactions or physiological suggestions 
so common with an infant's hands; it passed, by reason of 
its peculiar associations, into a sensori-motor reaction when- 
ever the presence of a face acted as suggestion, — so far a 
strong direct stimulus to the motor centres. Then came the 
pain of punishment, — a stimulus to the inhibition on the 
next occasion, not by exciting a clear memory, but by work- 
ing itself directly into the suggesting psychosis, and thus 
reducing the motor tendency. For a time the tendency re- 
mained strong enough, however, to cause the reaction ; then 
there followed an apparent balance between the two, and 
finally the pain element predominated in the suggestion, and 
the reaction was permanently inhibited. The stroking re- 
action gained all the strength of violent and repeated associa- 
tion with the elements of this mental conflict, and was thus 
soon fixed and permanent. 

Taking this as a typical case of 'deliberative suggestion,' 
— and I could instance many others from H.'s life history 

1 A somewhat similar action by a boy of nine months has been reported 
to me by Rev. C. H. Huestis of Barrington, Nova Scotia. 



Ideo-motor Suggestion 123 

and from E.'s, — two inferences may be brought out in 
passing : there is nothing here that requires volition, meaning 
by 'volition' a new influence of any kind, — active con- 
sciousness; if we do call it so, we simply apply a different 
term to phenomena which in their simplicity we call by 
other names. And, second, suggestion is as original a motor 
stimulus as pleasure and pain. Here they are in direct con- 
flict. Can we say that H. balanced the pleasure of scratch- 
ing and the pain of punishment, and decided the case on 
this egoistic basis? What pleasure did the scratching have 
more than any other muscular exercise? It was simply a 
sensori-motor habit which the pain inhibition tended to 
break up. 

So also, apart from pathological aboulia, which is described 
later on, we find a corresponding condition in adult life. As 
I have said elsewhere, "there is a state of conflict and hin- 
drance among presentations which is mechanical in its 
issue, ... so states of vexation, divided counsel, conflict- 
ing impulse, and hasty decision against one's desire for 
deliberate choice. We often find ourselves drawn violently 
apart, precipitated through a whirl of suggested courses into 
a course which we feel unwilling to acknowledge as our 
own." 1 Many of the conditions of deliberation are there, 
but not the fact of it. 

§ 4. Ideo-motor Suggestion 

By ideo-motor suggestion I mean the condition in which 
the stimulus is a clearly pictured idea, a presentation or 
object with all its 'meaning,' or a revived image of memory 
or imagination. 

1 Handbook, II., p. 299. This kind of complex suggestion, however, un- 
doubtedly serves to give a ready organic basis for the earlier and more obscure 
acts of volition, which are described later on (Chap. XIII., § 4). 



124 Suggestion 

Imitation} — For a long period after the child has learned 
to use all his senses, and after his memory is well developed, 
he lacks conscious imitation entirely. I have been quite 
unable with my children to confirm the results of Preyer, 
who attributes imitation to his child at the age of three to 
four months. 

In support of the assertion that imitation is rather late 
in its rise, the following experiences may be reported. As a 
necessary caution, the rule was made that no single perform- 
ance should be considered real imitation unless it could be 
brought out again under similar circumstances. This rule 
is necessary, I think, merely for caution, since the i copy ' set 
for imitation is likely to be some simple movement of lips, 
hands, etc., which the child has made himself before, and is 
likely to make again. It is possible also from the mere 
fact of dynamogeny that the motor discharge in shedding 
itself outward would tend in a general way to find its most 
permeable native pathway toward the muscles which repeat 
the copy, since the movements are natural and easy. At 
any rate, such cases, if they exist, shade up gradually into 
conscious imitations. 2 

It is probable, therefore, that cases of imitation recorded 
as happening as early as the third month are merely coinci- 
dences. For example, I recorded an apparent imitation by 
H., of closing the hand, as late as May 22 (beginning of the 
ninth month), but afterwards I wrote, " experiment not con- 
firmed with repeated trials running through four succeed- 
ing days." H.'s first clear imitation was on May 24, in 
knocking a bunch of keys against a vase, as she saw me do 

1 In this chapter the word 'imitation' is used to denote 'conscious' social 
imitation — its usual popular sense. 

2 See the remarks on the question of 'instinctive imitation,' below, Chap. 
XII., § 2. 



Ideo-motor Suggestion 125 

it, in order to produce the bell-like sound. This she re- 
peated over and over again, and tried to reproduce it a week 
later, when, from lapse of time, she had partly forgotten how 
to use the keys. But on the same day, May 24, other efforts 
to bring out imitation failed signally, i.e. with more or less 
articulate sounds, movements of the lips (Preyer's experi- 
ments), and opening and closing of the hands. Ten days 
later, however, she imitated closing the hand on three dif- 
ferent occasions. And a week afterward she imitated move- 
ments of the lips and certain sounds, as pa, ma, etc. 1 From 
this time forward the phenomenon seemed extended to a 
very wide range of activities, and began to assume the im- 
mense importance which it always comes to have in the life 
of the young child. 

When the imitative impulse does come, it comes in earnest. 
For many months after its rise it may be called, perhaps, the 
controlling impulse, apart from the ordinary life processes. 
As a phenomenon, it is too familiar to need description. Its 
importance in the growth of the child's mind is largely in 
connection with the development of language and of volun- 
tary movement generally. 

The phenomena may be divided into two general classes, 
called simple imitation and persistent imitation. 2 By 'sim- 

1 The majority of recorded observations agree in making vocal imitations 
later than visual-movement imitations. Egger, loc. cit., p. 8; Tracy, Psy- 
chology of Childhood, p. 57 (for citations); Stevenson, Science, March 3, 
1893. The first vocal imitation of my other child, E., was observed in her 
eleventh month, when she tried to say 'tick,' in reference to the clock, after 
her mother, together with ' ps' for 'pussy,' and ' po' for 'pop.' 

2 This is akin to Preyer's distinction between 'spontaneous' and 'de- 
liberate' imitation. He is wrong in making both classes voluntary. The 
contrary is proved for spontaneous imitation by the fact that many elements 
of facial expression are never acquired by blind children. We could hardly 
say that facial expression was a voluntary acquisition, however gradually 
it may have been acquired. See Preyer, Senses and Will, p. 293. 



126 Suggestion 

pie ' imitations reactions are characterized, in which the 
movement does not imitate well, but is the best the child 
can do. He does not try to improve by making a second 
attempt. This is evidently a case of simple sensori-motor 
suggestion, and is peculiar psychologically only because of 
the more or less remote approximation the reaction has to 
the model that the child copies. 

The reaction at which imitative suggestion aims is one 
which will reproduce the stimulating impression, and so tend 
to perpetuate itself. When a child strikes the combina- 
tion required, he is never tired working it. H. found end- 
less delight in putting the rubber on a pencil and off again, 
each act being a new stimulus to the eye. This is specially 
noticeable in children's early efforts at speech. They react 
all wrong when they first attack a new word, but gradually get 
it moderately well, and then sound it over and over in endless 
monotony. The essential thing, then, in imitation, over and 
above simple ideo-motor suggestion, is that the stimulus starts 
a motor process which tends to reproduce the stimulus and, 
through it, the motor process again. From the physiological 
side we have a circular activity — sensor, motor; sensor, 
motor : and from the psychological side we have a similar circle 
— reality, image, movement ; reality, image, movement, etc. 

The square to the left (Fig. XII.) is the first act of imita- 
tion; the movement (mt) now stimulates (dotted line a) the 
eye again (sg'), giving the second square, which by its move- 
ment (mf) furnishes yet another stimulus (dotted line a') ; 
and so on. 

By 'persistent imitation' is meant the child's effort, by 
repetition, to improve his imitations. Its extreme impor- 
tance justifies its separate discussion in a later place. 1 

1 Chap. XIII., § 2. The general discussion of the position of imitation 
in the mental life, especially its phylogenetic value, is reserved for later 
chapters (Chaps. IX.-XIIL). 



Ideo-motor Suggestion 127 

Surveying the ground that we have gone over so far in 
this chapter, the progress of suggestion may be seen by the 
following brief definitions : — ■ 

1. Physiological suggestion is the tendency of a reflex or 
secondary automatic process to get itself associated with 
and influenced by stimulating processes of a physiological 




Fig. XII. — Imitation 

and vaguely sensory sort. Perhaps the plainest case of it, 
on a large scale in animal life, is seen in the decay of in- 
stincts when no longer suited to the creature's needs and 
environment. 

2. Sensori-motor and ideo-motor suggestion is the tendency 
of all nervous reactions to adapt themselves to new stimula- 
tions, both sensory and ideal, in such a way as to be more 
ready for the repetition or continuance of these stimulations. 

3. Deliberative suggestion is the tendency of different com- 
peting sensory processes to merge in a single conscious state 
with a single motor reaction, illustrating the principles of 
nervous summation and arrest. 

4. Imitative suggestion is the tendency of a sensory or 
ideal process to maintain itself by such an adaptation of its 
discharges that they reinstate in turn new stimulations of the 
same kind. 

Whether any simpler formulation of these partial state- 
ments may be reached, is a question which may be delayed 



128 Suggestion 

until we have looked more closely at certain other instances 
of suggestion, which have not been described before, and at 
the conditions of nervous adaptation in general. 1 

§ 5. Subconscious Adult Suggestion 2 

There are certain phenomena of a rather striking kind 
coming under this head whose classification is so evident 
that discussion of the general psychological principles which 
they involve is not necessary. The kind of fact which I have 
in view may be illustrated with sufficient clearness merely 
by the recital of the following observations. 

Tune-suggestion. — Professor Ladd has pointed out in de- 
tail — what has for a long time been taken for granted — 
that dream states are largely indebted for their visual ele- 
ments, what we see in our dreams, to accidental lines, patches, 
etc., in the field of vision, when the eyes are shut, due to the 
distended blood vessels of the cornea and lids, to changes in 
the external illumination, to the presence of dust particles 
of different configuration, etc. 3 The other senses also un- 
doubtedly contribute to the texture of our dreams by equally 
subconscious suggestions. And there is no doubt, further, 
that our waking life is constantly influenced by equally 
trivial stimulations. 

I have tested in detail, for example, the conditions of the 
rise of so-called ' internal tunes ' — we speak of ' tunes in our 
heads ' or 'in our ears ' — and find certain suggestive in- 
fluences which in most cases cause these tunes to rise and 

1 See Chap. VII. on 'The Theory of Development,' and Chap. IX. on 
'Organic Imitation.' 

2 Mr. A. G. Parrott has sent to me confirmation by himself of many of 
the observations of this section. 

3 Ladd, 'Psychology of Visual Dreams,' in Mind, N. S., Vol. I. (1892), 
p. 299. 



Subconscious Adult Suggestion 129 

take their course. Often, when a tune springs up 'in my 
head,' the same tune has been lately sung or whistled in my 
hearing, though quite unconsciously to myself. Often the 
tunes are those heard in church the previous day or earlier. 
Such a tune I am entirely unable to recall voluntarily: yet 
when it comes into my mind's ear, so to speak, I readily 
recognize it as belonging to an earlier day's experience. 
Other cases show various accidental suggestions, such as the 
tune 'Mozart' suggested by the composer's name, the tune 
'Gentle Annie' suggested by the name Annie, etc. In all 
these cases it is only after the tune has taken possession of 
consciousness, and after much seeking, that the suggesting 
influence is discovered. 

Closer analysis reveals the following facts. The 'time' of 
such internal tunes is usually dictated by some rhythmical 
subconscious occurrence. After hearty meals it is always 
the time of the heart-beat, unless there be 'in the air' some 
more impressive stimulus; as, for example, when on ship- 
board, the beat is with me invariably that of the engine 
throbs. When walking it is the rhythm of the foot-fall. On 
one occasion a knock of four beats on the door started the 
Marseillaise in my ear : following up this clue, I found that 
at any time, different divisions of musical time being struck 
on the table at will by another person, tunes would spring 
up and run on, getting their cue from the measures sug- 
gested. Further, when a tune dies away, its last notes often 
suggest, some time after, another having a similar move- 
ment — just as we pass from one tune to another in a 'med- 
ley.' It may also be noted that in my case the tune memories 
are auditive: they run in my head when I have no words 
for them and have never sung them — an experience which 
is consistent with the fact that these 'internal tunes' arise in 
childhood before the faculty of speech. They also have 



1 30 Suggestion 

distinct pitch. For example, on April 9, 1892, I found a 
tune 'in my head' which was perfectly familiar, but for 
which I could find no words. Tested on the piano, the 
pitch was /-sharp and the time was my heart -beat. I finally, 
after much effort, got the unworthy words, 'Wait till the 
clouds roll by,' by humming the tune over repeatedly. The 
pitch is determined, probably, by the accidental condition of 
the auditory centre as respects pitch-readiness, or by the pitch- 
colouring of the external sound which serves as stimulus to 
the tune. 

Dreams as Emotion Stimulus. — Another important realm 
of suggestion, not hitherto explored, is seen in the influence 
of dreams on the waking life. Dreams react to deepen 
waking impressions, and to strengthen the hold of dominant 
presentations and impulses. This fact seems to have its 
primary application to emotion. We cannot tell how much 
of the active momentum of our waking life we owe to dream 
stimulation. The following case of fact, in the life of my 
little girl H., indicates that such a stimulus may be of enor- 
mous importance. When two years and three months of 
age, she was accidentally run over by a dog. Before this 
she had been very fond of dogs. She was not much hurt, 
but very much frightened, and repeated to every one the 
words, 'Doggie run over baby.' The next day she saw a 
dog on the street and showed some signs of fear until the 
brute ran away. About the second night after the occurrence 
her mother and I were awakened by a violent outcry in H.'s 
room. On going in, the child was found sitting in bed under- 
going a paroxysm of fear from a bad dream. She repeated 
again and again after leaving the room, 'Doggie run over 
baby ana' (ana was her word for there), pointing into her 
bedroom. Evidently she had lived over again in her dream 
the occurrence with the dog. The effect on her waking life 



Subconscious Adult Suggestion 131 

was very marked. The next day she could not be induced 
to go into her bedroom, protesting, ' Doggie in ana/ and 
crying lustily if the endeavour was made to carry her. Fur- 
ther, for several days the sight of a dog on the street threw 
her into such convulsive fits of fear that her nurse brought 
her home to be quieted — a much more violent exhibition, 
be it noted, than that which occurred after the real occurrence 
with the dog, but before the dream. The sight or even the 
picture of a dog long excited great emotion, and it is not un- 
likely that she will carry for life this antipathy, which will 
appear later to be unaccountable. 1 

Normal Auto-suggestion. — - A further class of suggestions, 
which fall under the general phrase 'auto-suggestion,' of a 
normal type, may be illustrated. In experimenting upon 
the possibility of suggesting sleep to another, I have found 
certain strong reactive influences upon my own mental con- 
dition. Such an effort, which involves the picturing of an- 
other as asleep, is a strong auto-suggestion of sleep, taking 
effect in my own case in about five minutes if the conditions 
be kept constant. The more clearly the patient's sleep is 
pictured, the stronger becomes the subjective feeling of 
drowsiness. After about ten minutes the ability to give 
strong concentration seems to disintegrate, attention is re- 
newed only by fits and starts and in the presence of great 
mental inertia, and the oncoming of sleep is almost over- 
powering. A frequent cure for insomnia, speaking for my- 
self, is the persistent effort to put some one else asleep by 
hard thinking of the end in view, with a continued gentle 
movement, such as stroking the other with the hand. 

On the other hand, it is impossible to bring on a state of 
drowsiness by imagining myself asleep. The first effort at 

1 Fe*re cites a case of hysterical paralysis brought on by a dream, Sensa- 
tion et Mouvement, p. 25. See also Brain, January, 1887. 



132 Suggestion 

this, indeed, is promising, for it leads to a state of restfulness 
and ease akin to the mental composure which is the usual 
preliminary to sleep ; but it goes no farther. It is succeeded 
by a state of steady wakefulness, which effort of attention or 
effort not to attend only intensifies. If the victim of insomnia 
could only forget that he is thus afflicted, could forget himself 
altogether, his case would be more hopeful. The contrast 
between this condition and that already described shows 
that it is the self -idea, with the emotions it awakens, which 
prevents the suggestion from realizing itself and probably 
accounts for many cases of insomnia. 1 

The attempt to analyze out the emotional ' moments ' 
which enter into the latter case yields some such result as 
the following. It is impossible to think of self, however 
vaguely and fugitively, without inducing positive emotional 
excitement. All the intense self-motives which practical life 
keeps alive — the most vigorous expressive influences of our 
mental nature — at once tend to spring up from their nascent 
state. There are really no proper distinctions among them : 
pride 2 shades down to complacency, complacency merges 
into mild interest, interest becomes intensified in anxiety or 
fear. Or the mere thought of self starts a train of affairs 
through consciousness about which personal concern is 
lively. When one thinks of himself, a kind of egoistic excite- 
ment at once arises. It is undoubtedly these subjective ele- 
ments, these emotional phases, which prevent such conscious 
auto-suggestions from realizing themselves. 

Sense Exaltation. — Recent hypnotic discussions have 
shown the remarkable exaltation which the senses may 

1 This is confirmed by the fact that insomnia readily yields to hypnotic 
suggestion. 

2 A friend informs me that when he pictures himself asleep or dead, he 
cannot help feeling gratified that he makes so handsome a corpse. 



Subconscious Adult Suggestion 133 

attain in somnambulism, together with a corresponding re- 
finement in the interpretative faculty. Events, etc., quite 
subconscious, usually become suggestions of direct influence 
upon the subject. Unintended gestures, habitual with the 
experimenter, may suffice to hypnotize his accustomed sub- 
ject. The possibility of such training of the senses in the 
normal state has not had sufficient emphasis. The young 
child's subtle discriminations of facial and other personal 
indications are remarkable. The prolonged experience of 
putting H. to sleep — ■ extending over a period of more than 
six months, during which I slept beside her bed — served 
to make me alive to a certain class of suggestions otherwise 
quite beyond notice. 1 

In the first place, we may note the intense auto-suggestion 
of sleep already pointed out, under the stimulus of repeated 
nursery rhymes regularly resorted to in putting the child 
asleep. Second, surprising progressive exaltation of hearing 
and the interpretation of sounds coming from her in a dark 
room. At the end of four or five months, her movements in 
bed awoke me or not according as she herself was awake or 
not. Frequently after awaking I was distinctly aware of 
what movements of hers had awaked me. 2 A movement of 
her head by which it was held up from her pillow was readily 
distinguished from the restless movements of her sleep. It 
was not so much, therefore, exaltation of hearing as exalta- 
tion of the function of the recognition of sounds heard and of 
their discrimination. 

Again, the same phenomenon to an equally marked degree 

1 It is well known that mothers are awake to the needs of their infants 
when they are asleep to everything else. 

2 This fact is analogous to our common experience of being awaked by a 
loud noise and then hearing it after we awake ; although the explanation is 
not the same. 



1 34 Suggestion 

attended the sound of her breathing. It is well enough 
known that the smallest functional bodily change induces 
changes in both the rapidity and the quality of the respira- 
tion. 1 In sleep the muscles of inhalation and exhalation are 
relaxed, inhalation becomes long and deep, exhalation short 
and exhaustive, and the rhythmic intervals of respiration 
much lengthened. Now degrees of relative wakefulness are 
indicated with surprising delicacy by the slight respiration- 
sounds given forth by the sleeper. Professional nurses learn 
to interpret these indications with great skill. This kind of 
hearing-exaltation became very pronounced in my operations 
with my child. After some experience the peculiar breath- 
ing of advancing or actual wakefulness in the child was suffi- 
cient to wake me. And when awake myself, the change in 
the infant's respiration-sounds to those indicative of on- 
coming sleep was sufficient to suggest or bring on sleep in 
myself. In the dark, also, the general character of her 
breathing-sounds was interpreted with great accuracy in 
terms of her varied needs, her comfort or discomfort, etc. 
The same kind of suggestion from the respiration-sounds 
now troubles me whenever any one is sleeping within hearing 
distance. 2 

1 Cf. Vierordt in Gerhard? s Handbuch der Kinderkrankheitcn, p. 215. 

3 This is an unpleasant result which I find confirmed by professional 
infants' nurses. They complain of loss of sleep when off duty. Mrs. James 
Murray, an infants' nurse in Toronto, informs me that she finds it impossible 
to sleep when she has no infant in hearing distance, and for that reason she 
never asks for a vacation. Her normal sleep has evidently come to depend 
upon continuous soporific suggestions from a child. In another point, also, 
her experience confirms my observations, viz., the child's movements, pre- 
liminary to waking, awake her, when no other movements of the child do so 
— the consequence being that she is ready for the infant when it gets fully 
awake and cries out. 

I may add that these vague suggestive influences, acting upon the operator, 
have not been sufficiently weighed in the practice of hypnotism. Ochorowicz 



Inhibitory Suggestion 135 

The reactions in movement upon these suggestions are very 
marked and appropriate, in customary or habitual lines, al- 
though the stimulations are quite subconscious. The clearest 
illustrations in this body of my experiences were afforded by 
my responses in crude songs to the infant's waking move- 
ments and breathing-sounds. I have often waked myself 
by myself singing one of two nursery rhymes, which by end- 
less repetition night after night had become so automatic as 
to follow in a reactive way upon the sense -stimulus from the 
child. It is certainly astonishing that among the things 
which one may get to do automatically, we find automatic 
singing: but writers on mental defect have noted that the 
function of musical or semi-musical expression may be reflex. 1 

The principle of subconscious suggestion, of which these 
simple facts are less important illustrations, has very interest- 
ing applications in the higher reaches of social, moral, and 
educational theory. I have applied the phrase ' plastic imita- 
tion' to certain of the social and educational phenomena. 2 

§ 6. Inhibitory Suggestion 

An interesting class of phenomena which figure perhaps 
at all the levels of suggestion now described, may be known 
as 'inhibitory suggestions.' The phrase, in its broadest use, 
refers to all cases in which the suggesting stimulus tends to 
suppress, check, inhibit, movement. We find this in certain 

points this out. It is almost impossible for the operator to give suggestions 
which he has not himself taken in a measure from the patient, or which both 
he and the patient have not gotten in common from a common psychic atmos- 
phere. There is, I fancy, a good deal of this reciprocal influence in the cases 
of striking rapport between particular operators and patients. Of course I 
can more easily give effective suggestions to you, if I am myself getting what 
I suggest in whole or part from you in the first instance. 

1 Cf. Wallaschek, Zeitsch. fur Psychologie, VI., Hefte 2, 3. 

2 Mind, January, 1894; cf. Chap, XIL, § 2, below. 



1 36 Suggestion 

cases just as strongly marked as the positive movement- 
bringing kind of suggestion. The facts may be put under 
certain heads in relation to the types of suggestion already 
enumerated, the general theory being left over for the doctrine 
of mental development found in subsequent chapters. 

Pain Suggestion. — Of course, the fact that pain inhibits 
movement occurs at once to the reader. As far as this is 
true always, and is a native inherited thing, it is organic, 
and so falls under the head of "' physiological suggestion ' of 
a negative sort. The child shows contracting movements, 
crying movements, starting and jumping movements, shortly 
after birth, and so plainly that we need not hesitate to say 
that these pain responses are provided for in his nervous 
system; and that, in general, they are inhibitory and con- 
trary to those other native reactions which indicate pleasure. 
Our theory provides, as stated below, a way of accounting 
for this state of things. 1 

The influence of pain, besides being thus a physiological 
datum, extends everywhere through mental development. It 
is one of our main objects to try to ascertain its exact func- 
tion, both in individual and in race development; so any 
further word upon it here would only anticipate later de- 
tailed treatment. The general fact, however, is this: that 
pain suggests a lively muscular revolt away from every stimu- 
lus which produces it ; and this statement includes, of course, 
the inhibition of any movement which brings pain, since this 
movement is itself felt as a stimulating or incoming process 
along those afferent nerve courses which serve as the appara- 
tus of the muscular sense. 

Control Suggestion. — This covers all cases which show 
any kind of restraint set upon the movements of the body 
short of that which comes from voluntary intention. The 

1 See especially, Chap. VII. and Chap. XVI., § 2. 



Inhibitory Suggestion 137 

infant brings the movements of his legs, arms, head, etc., 
gradually into some kind of order and system. This is 
accomplished by a system of organic checks and counter- 
checks, by which associations are formed between muscu- 
lar sensations and certain other sensations, as of sight, touch, 
hearing, etc. The latter serve as suggestions to the per- 
formance of those movements, and those only, which produce 
the former. The infant learns to hold up his head, to raise 
his trunk, to extend his hands, to grasp with thumb opposite 
the four fingers — all purely by such control suggestions. 

These cases come so near to the sphere of voluntary 
action — indeed, they pass so directly into volitions — that 
they are more profitably discussed in the chapter devoted 
to that topic. We will there see reasons for rejecting the 
view of some, that these are voluntary acts on the part of the 
child. The few new observations which I have to offer on 
this topic may also be reserved. 

Contrary Suggestion. — By this is meant a tendency of a 
very singular kind observable in many children, no less than 
in many adults, to do the contrary when any course is sug- 
gested. The very word ' contrary' is used in popular talk 
to describe an individual who shows this type of conduct. 
Such a child or man is rebellious whenever rebellion is pos- 
sible; he seems to kick constitutionally against the pricks. 
My child E. showed it in her second year in a very marked 
way. When told that a new taste was 'good' — a sugges- 
tion readily taken in its positive sense by her sister at that age 
— she would turn away with a show of distaste even when she 
had liked the same taste earlier. When asked to give her 
hand into mine, — a case of direct imitative suggestion, — 
she thrust it behind her back. The sight of hat and cloak 
was a signal for a tempest, although she enjoyed outdoor 
excursions. These are only instances from many of her 



1 38 Suggestion 

contrary suggestions at this period. The tendency yielded to 
the all-conquering onset of imitation late in her second year, 
and she is now (third year) as docile an imitator as one could 
desire. 

The fact of i contrariness ' in older children — especially 
boys — is so familiar to all who have observed school chil- 
dren with any care, that I need not cite further details. And 
men and women often become so enslaved to suggestions of 
contrary that they seem only to wait for indications of the 
wishes of others in order to oppose and thwart them. 

Contrary suggestions are to be explained as exaggerated 
instances of control. It is easy to see that the checks and 
counter-checks already spoken of as constituting the method 
of suggestive control of movement — that these may them- 
selves become so habitual and intense as to dominate the 
reactions which they should only regulate. The associa- 
tions between the muscular series and the visual series, let us 
say, which controls it, comes to work backwards, so that the 
drift of the organic processes is toward certain contrary re- 
verse movements. Certain of the other associates of the con- 
trol series also, especially those which, by strong contrasting 
experiences of pleasure and pain, represent in any sense a 
contrary series, may become dominating. While in the case 
of simple movements, as I have said, the dominant associates 
are only the same motor and visual series read backwards; 
yet the range of contrast effects secured by association ex- 
tends to all cases of opposing systems of movement and sug- 
gestions of conduct. So contrary suggestion becomes clear 
as a case of auto-suggestion in which the stimulating sensa- 
tion or thought is itself started up in sharp contrast and habit- 
ual opposition to a present external suggestion of the regular 
kind. 

In the higher reaches of conduct and life we find interest- 



Inhibitory Suggestion 1 39 

ing cases of very refined contrary suggestion. In the man of 
ascetic temperament, the duty of self-denial takes the form of 
a regular contrary suggestion in opposition to every invita- 
tion to self-indulgence, however innocent. And the over- 
scrupulous mind, like the over-precise, is a prey to the eternal 
remonstrances from the contrary which intrude their advice 
into all his decisions. In matters of thought and belief, also, 
cases are common of stubborn opposition to evidence, and 
persistence in opinion, which are in no way due to the cogency 
of the contrary argument, or to real force of conviction. 

Bashfulness. — I may first report observations on this in- 
teresting fact of child-life, considered as an exhibition of what 
has been called ' inhibitory suggestion'; and then show its 
bearings. 

The general character of a child's bashfulness need not be 
enlarged upon. Its form of expression is also familiar. It 
begins to appear generally in the first year, showing itself as 
an inhibiting influence upon the child's normal activities. 
Its most evident signs are nervous fingerings of dress, objects, 
hands, etc., turning away of head and body, bowing of head 
and hiding of face, awkward movements of trunk and legs, 
and in extreme cases, reddening of the face, puckering of lips 
and eye muscles, and finally cries and weeping. An impor- 
tant difference, however, is observable in these exhibitions 
according as the child is accompanied by a familiar person 
or not. When the mother or nurse is present, many of the 
signs seem to be useful in securing concealment from the eye 
of strangers — behind dress or apron or figure of the familiar 
person. In the absence, however, of such a refuge the child 
sinks often into a state of general passivity or inhibition of 
movement, akin to the sort of paralysis usually associated 
with great fear. 

This analogy with the physical signs of fear gives a real 



140 Suggestion 

indication, I think, of the race origin of bashfulness, which is 
probably a differentiation of fear. This I cannot dwell upon 
now, but simply suggest that bashfulness arose as a special 
utility-reaction on occasion of fear of persons, in view of 
personal qualities possessed by the one who fears. The 
concealing tendency also shows the parallel development 
of intimate personal relationships of protection, support, 
etc., and so gives indications of certain early social con- 
ditions. 

My observations of bashfulness — not to dwell upon de- 
scriptions which have been made before by others — serve 
to throw the illustrations of it into certain periods or epochs 
which I may briefly characterize in order. 

1. The child is earliest seized with what may be called 
1 primary' or ' organic' bashfulness akin to the organic stages 
in the well-recognized instinctive emotions, such as fear, anger, 
sympathy, etc. 1 This exhibition occurs in the first year and 
marks the attitudes of the infant toward strangers. It is not 
so much inhibitory of action in this first stage ; it rather takes 
on the positive signs of fear, with protestation, shrinking, 
crying, etc. It falls easily under the type of reaction de- 
scribed as ' sensori-motor suggestion,' above; being very 
largely provided for in the nervous equipment of the child at 
this age. 

The duration of this stage depends largely upon the child's 
social environment. The passage from the attitude of in- 
stinctive antipathy toward outsiders, and that of affection 
equally instinctive toward the members of the household, over 
into a more reasonable sense of the difference between proved 
friends and unproved strangers — this depends directly upon 
the growth of the sense of general social relationships es- 

1 On which last see Chap. XI., § 3, below, and cf. my Handbook of Psy- 
chology, II., Chap. VIII., § 7. 



Inhibitory Suggestion 141 

tablished by experience. 1 One of the most important ele- 
ments in the child's progress, in this way, out of its ' organic ' 
social life, is the degree and variety of its intercourse with 
other children, and indeed also with other adults, than those 
of its own home. Children carried to summer hotels every 
year, or brought frequently into the drawing-room to see the 
mothers' callers, soon lose all ' fear of strangers ' and become 
quite frankly approachable, even showing great liking for 
society at the tender age of a year and a half or so. On the 
other hand, children kept in extreme isolation from strangers, 
young or old, may show extraordinary paralysis of all motor 
functions, of a markedly organic kind, steadily for two or 
three years later on in their development, when brought sud- 
denly into the presence of those who are unfamiliar. 2 

The rapidity with which a child gets over its organic bash- 
fulness varies also remarkably with the attitudes of older 
children whom he sees. Nothing else cures a child of this 
physical shyness as quickly as the example of an older child. 
This is also one of the marked offices of imitation. It pre- 
sents to the imitative child an example or 'copy,' which tends 
to bring out his action in definite ways earlier than his own 
organic growth would in itself have warranted. The child 
by instinct imitates movements, etc., which he would other- 
wise have waited to acquire largely by accident. In this way 
the stages of social growth are very materially shortened. 

2. I find next a period of strong social tendency in the child, 
of toleration of strangers and liking for persons generally, in 
great contrast to the attitudes of organic distrust of the earlier 
period just mentioned. There seems to be in this a reaction 

1 The experience, i.e., largely got through imitation and its clarifying influ- 
ence upon the sense of self in the child; see below, Chap. XI., § 3. 

2 See the remarks on such 'isolation/ in reference to the development of 
personality, in my short article in the Century Magazine, December, 1894, 
repeated in substance below, Chap. XII., § 3. 



142 Suggestion 

against the instinct of social self-preservation characteristic 
of the earlier stage. It is due in all likelihood to the actual 
experience of the child in receiving kind treatment from stran- 
gers — kinder in the way of indiscriminate indulgence than 
the more orderly treatment which it gets from its own parents. 
Everybody comes to be trusted on first acquaintance by the 
child, through the teachings of his own experience, just as in 
the earlier years everybody was treated by him, under the 
instincts of his inherited nature, as an agent of possible 
harm. 

That this new phase of social attitude is learned from ex- 
perience is seen in the absence of this confidence, on the part 
of the child, toward animals. The fear, purely of the or- 
ganic stage, persists in the child's thoughts of animals which 
are new to him, and only becomes more confirmed as he fails 
to get the same reasons for l modifying his opinion' that 
teach him to tolerate strange persons more and more com- 
fortably. The contrast is strongly brought out sometimes 
when such a young child meets animals in public places. He 
then turns to persons for protection, even to the strange per- 
sons before whom, under ordinary circumstances, he would 
stand abashed. His native sense of social protection, at first 
limited to his natural protectors in his own house, has come 
to extend to all persons, as against such common enemies as 
the brutes. Later on, as we know, the domestic animals get 
taken over, also, from the one class into the other. 

3. Finally I note the return of bashfulness in the child's 
third year and later. This time it is bashfulness in the 
proper sense of the term, rid of the element of fear, and rid, 
largely, of its compelling organic force and methods of ex- 
pression. The bashful five-year-old smiles in the midst of 
his hesitations, draws near to the object of his curiosity, is 
evidently overwhelmed with the sense of his own presence 



Inhibitory Suggestion 143 

rather than with that of his new acquaintance, and indulges 
in actions calculated to keep notice drawn to himself. 

The reality of this group of the child's social attitudes, and 
the great contrast which they present to those of the organic 
period, can hardly have too much emphasis. It is one of 
the great outstanding facts of his progressive relation to the 
elements of his social milieu. There is a sort of self-exhibi- 
tion, almost of coquetry, in the child's behaviour; which 
shows the most remarkable commingling of native organic 
elements with the social lessons of personal well- and ill- 
desert which are now becoming of such importance in his life. 
All this makes so marked a contrast to the exhibitions of 
organic bashfulness that it constitutes in my opinion a most 
important resource for the study of the evolution of the social 
sense. 

In this last case we have before us, in short, a phenomenon 
of rather complex self-consciousness — a thing of ideal value 
— and its suggestion-complexes, as they body themselves 
forth in the child's reactions, tell of his extraordinary progress 
in the understanding of himself and the world. He now 
begins to show the germ of modesty and of all the emotions 
akin to and contrary to it. 

With this degree of progress we may now leave the child, 
not undertaking the discussion of the development of true 
modesty in its later stages in the intricate special movements 
of adolescence: but it remains to point out the congruity 
between this scheme of the child's different behaviours in 
respect to persons and the different personal suggestions 
which in an earlier place * we found him actually getting from 
others. 

It will be remembered that several aspects of the child's 

1 Cf. § 3 of this chapter, above, which restates an article on 'Personality 
Suggestion,' in The Psychological Review, I., p. 274, May, 1894. 



144 Suggestion 

personal environment were found to appeal to him in a pro- 
gressive way. It seemed fair to think that persons are at first 
to him only a peculiar part of his ' projected,' presented, ob- 
jective, world of things. He has 'personal projects,' as we 
found it well to call them, before he has any sense of himself 
as a spiritual being or as the subject of his own mental pro- 
cesses. The getting of objects seems to be part of the busi- 
ness for which his nervous equipment more or less adequately 
provides, and among these objects, the persons who move 
around him get themselves characterized by very important 
marks. 

The observation of organic bashfulness tends, when viewed 
in connection with this earlier point, to confirm this view of 
the way the child begins to apprehend persons; and at the 
same time, it enables us to see a little farther. For strange as 
it may appear, we are here confronted with an element of 
organic equipment especially fitted to receive and respond to 
these peculiar objects, persons, ' personal projects.' The 
child strikes instinctively an extraordinary series of attitudes 
when persons appear among his objects, attitudes which other 
objects, qua objects, do not excite. And later in life, in the 
organic effects indicative of modesty, such as blushing, hesi- 
tating, etc., we find similar signs of a social rapport which 
has grown into the very fibres of our nerves. These atti- 
tudes extend somewhat to animals, as we have seen ; and that 
makes it all the more striking. For animals are persons, to 
a child of that age; they act upon him through his animal 
parts, through physical pains, pleasures, fears, etc., and that 
is the only way that persons also can act upon an infant a 
year old. 

We have to say, therefore, that the child is born to be a 
member of society, in the same sense, precisely, that he is 
born with eyes and ears to see and hear the movements and 



Inhibitory Suggestion 145 

sounds of the world, and with touch to feel the things of space ; 
and, as I hope to show later in detail, 1 all views of the man as 
a total creature, a creation, must recognize him not as a single 
soul shut up in a single body to act, or to abstain from act- 
ing, upon others similarly shut up in similar bodies ; but as 
a soul partly in his own body, partly in the bodies of others, 
to all intents and purposes, so intimate is this social bond — 
a service for which he pays in kind, since we see in his body, 
considered simply as a physical organism, preparation for the 
reception of the soul-life, the suggestions of mind and spirit, 
of those others. I do not see wherein the community of the 
senses together, in a single life of nervous activity, differs 
very much in conception from this community of men, bound 
together by the native ties which lie at the basis of their most 
abstract and developed social organizations. 

Again, the second phase of the child's actions in the presence 
of persons — the freer, more ready reception of strangers and 
intercourse with them, seen usually during the second year — 
this also gives us what our earlier notes on ' personality- sug- 
gestion' would lead us to expect. We saw that the child 
begins to find out more about persons* and so to gain associa- 
tions which give him the beginning of certain expectations 
regarding them ; self-formed expectations, that is, no longer 
dependent merely upon the stirrings of instinct and in- 
herited impulse. He learns that pleasure almost always 
comes from persons, and so does the alleviation of pain. 
This is a mortal blow at organic bashfulness, as every father 
and mother knows. A lump of sugar will very soon release 
the inhibitions of the shy year-old. Then he further learns 
something of the characteristics of persons, the irregularity 
of personal action, the presence of the ' personal equation' 

1 Now made the principal thesis of the volume Social and Ethical Inter- 
pretations. 

L 



146 Suggestion 

of mood and feeling in those nearest to him. This leads him 
to seek out methods, somewhat individual to himself, of pleas- 
ing these near persons and of securing their smile and appro- 
bation, or of escaping the reproofs which even his shyness 
brings ; and these he substitutes for the blinder attempt, which 
nature taught him, to hide his physical person. 

And he also learns our habits, the regularities of character 
in adults, and so learns that nobody means to hurt him, 
after all. It is amusing how soon a two- or three-year-old 
child 'sizes up' a stranger, and meets him halfway with 
conduct more or less appropriately attuned to the in- 
dications of character shown in the face and acts of the 
newcomer. 

So, with all this, the instinctive or ' organic' bashfulness 
gets rapidly rubbed away. But it is now clear that the 
means of this freedom from it are all social. A child's 
growth away from the instinct of social fear to the appre- 
hension of social truth, and all his actions midway in this 
progress, come only from varied and persistent experience 
of people and appeals to living examples. How can char- 
acter be apprehended if characters are absent? And how 
can character schemes be grown into, if the regularity of the 
child's life is of so narrow a scope that all the threads of his 
social relationship run the same way, and no tangles and 
confusions arise to bring out his own strenuous action and 
his rebellions against his native reflex ways of behaviour ? 

The oncoming of true bashfulness, finally, — the bash- 
fulness which shows reflection, in its simpler form, upon self 
and the actions of self, — represents the child's direct ap- 
plication of what he knows of persons to his own inner life. 
It is what we have called the l subjective' stage in his sense 
of personality. 1 

1 See Mind, January, 1894; also below, Chap. XI., § 3. 



Inhibitory Suggestion 147 

But, as we shall also see, this grows only apace with the 
contrary movement by which he assigns his own enriched 
mental experience back to his teacher, and seeks his further 
judgment upon it. The child, when he knows himself able 
to draw a figure, for example, does not know this alone, or 
this completely. He has also the sense of the social 'copy' 
or example from which the lesson was learned, and further 
and with it, he knows that his performance is again subject 
to revision in light of the approval or disapproval of teacher 
or friend. The performances of the self cannot in any case 
be freed from the sense of possible inspection by others, and 
the child shrinks from this inspection. This has further 
development below. Suffice it to say that in this higher 
rapport, which involves clearly the sense of self-agency, but 
self-agency still tied down to the agency of other people like 
self, — here in the real reflective relation of self to others, 
— comes the third and crowning stage of the class of phe- 
nomena known by the word ' bashfulness.' My children do 
their imperfect tasks for me because they know me to under- 
stand and be indulgent : even the elder assumes the patron, 
and says of the younger: 'She is so little, you know.' But 
in the presence of the stranger whose opinion is not known 
beforehand, they are bashful with the sense of new standards 
perhaps firmly insisted upon. This is where the inhibiting 
suggestion of true bashfulness appears: that of modesty, 
and clearly also that of certain ethical emotions. 

The whole situation becomes, I may add, an extraordinary 
point of vantage for estimating the development view of the 
origin of the social and personal sense. We have in it 
direct evidence of the growth of the social instinct by accre- 
tions from experiences of social conditions — or if we go 
into refinements of biological theory, from the adding up of 



148 Suggestion 

variations all fitted to survive socially — and direct evidence, 
further, of the lines of progress which these experiences and 
variations have marked out. For the infant is an embryo 
person, a social unit in the process of forming; and he is, 
in these early stages, plainly recapitulating the items in the 
social history of the race. 1 

This social evolution presents a phase, therefore, of gen- 
eral development in which the theory that the individual 
goes through stages which repeat the race-stages of his 
species ought to find illustrations of more than common 
value. For the social life is a late attainment, whether con- 
sidered anthropologically or racially, and the child waits to 
begin the series of ' laps in the social race ' until he meets us, 
his observers, face to face. The embryology of society is 
open to study in the nursery. 

I think, accordingly, that several important hints at the 
history of societies, both animal and human, are afforded 
by the phenomena of bashfulness as now described. These 
I can do no more than mention at present. 

Organic bashfulness would seem to represent the instinc- 
tive fear shown by the higher animals, coupled with the 
natural family and gregarious instincts which they have. 
This shades up into the more fearless and more confiding 
attitudes of certain passably peaceable creatures, which take 
kindly to domestication, and depend more upon animal 
organizations and natural defences, such as those afforded 
by geographical distribution, coloration, habits of life, etc., 
for their protection. For the social protections are after all 
more effective for the defence of racial life and propagation 
than the special instinctive armament of individuals. Then, 
of course, only in man do we find the stage of reflective 

1 See the discussion of the biological theory of 'Recapitulation,' above, 
Chap. I. 



Hypnotic Suggestion 149 

thought on self and the social relations of self, which is seen 
germinating in the child in the third year or later. 

The parallel seems also to be worth something to the 
anthropologist when he comes to inquire into the history of 
the human species. Admitting with Westermarck that man 
as a species is monogamous and tends to family life, we 
should find in his earliest history the period corresponding 
to the organic bashfulness of the child; and its instinctive 
presence in the very young child lends some support, per- 
haps, to Westermarck's view. The later tribal and nomadic 
conditions possibly tended to release the cords of an instinct 
so purely defensive, and to bring in the freer range of peace- 
ful pursuits represented, it is conceivable, by the second 
stage of the child's history ; while again the stage of develop- 
ment of the distinctly industrial, artistic, and commercial life 
of man, with its social ways of solving all problems of public 
welfare, corresponds to the more reflective attainments of the 
period which is seen dawning in the true bashfulness of the 
three-year-old. For there can be no doubt that recent 
writers are correct in finding that the more refined egoism 
is a reflex from the more generalized socialism; a thesis 
which social psychology takes now from the analyses of men 
like Balzac and Bourget and the insights of Tarde and the 
historians of society; but one which it is itself quite able, I 
think, to make good by its own methods of inquiry. 

§ 7. Hypnotic Suggestion 

The facts upon which the current theories of hypnotism 
are based may be summed up under a few heads, and the 
recital of them will serve to bring this class of phenomena 
into the general lines of classification drawn out in this 
chapter. 



1 50 Suggestion 

The Facts. — When by any cause the attention is held fixed 
upon an object, say a bright button, for a sufficient time 
without distraction, the subject begins to lose consciousness 
in a progressive way. Generalizing this simple experiment, 
we may say that any method or device which serves to secure 
undivided and prolonged attention to any kind of a ' sugges- 
tion,' — be it object, idea, anything that can be thought 
about, — this brings on what is called hypnosis to a person 
normally constituted. 

The Paris school of interpreters find three stages of progress 
in the hypnotic sleep : First, catalepsy, characterized by rigid 
fixity of the muscles in any position in which the limbs may 
be put by the experimenter, with great suggestibility on the 
side of consciousness, and anaesthesia in certain areas of the 
skin and in certain of the special senses; second, lethargy, 
in which consciousness seems to disappear entirely, the sub- 
ject cannot be aroused by any sense stimulation by eye, ear, 
skin, etc., and the body is flabby and pliable as in natural sleep ; 
third, somnambulism, so called from its analogies to the 
ordinary sleep-walking condition to which many persons are 
subject. This last covers the phenomena of ordinary mes- 
meric exhibitions at which travelling mesmerists 'control' 
persons before audiences and make them obey their com- 
mands. While other scientists properly deny these distinct 
stages as such, they may yet be taken as representing ex- 
treme instances of the phenomena, and serve as points of 
departure for further discussion. 

On the mental side the general characteristics of hypnotic 
somnambulism are as follows: 1. The impairing of memory 
in a peculiar way. In the hypnotic condition all affairs of 
the ordinary life are forgotten; on the other hand, after 
waking, the events of the hypnotic condition are forgotten. 
Further, in any subsequent period of hypnosis the events of 



Hypnotic Suggestion 1 5 1 

the former similar periods are remembered. So a person 
who is habitually hypnotized has two continuous memories; 
one for the events of his normal life, only when he is normal, 
and one for the events of his hypnotic periods, only when he is 
hypnotized. 

2. Suggestibility to a remarkable degree. By this is meant 
the tendency of the subject to have in reality any mental con- 
dition which is suggested to him. He is subject to sugges- 
tions both on the side of his receptivity to impressions and 
on the side of action. He will see, hear, remember, believe, 
refuse to see, hear, etc., anything, with some doubtful excep- 
tions, which may be suggested to him by word or deed, or 
even by the slightest and perhaps unconscious indications of 
those about him. On the side of conduct his suggestibility 
is equally remarkable. Not only will he act in harmony 
with the illusions of sight, etc., suggested to him, but he 
will carry out, like an automaton, the actions suggested to 
him. Further, pain, pleasure, and the organic accompani- 
ments of them may be produced by suggestion. The arm 
may be actually scarred with a lead-pencil if the patient be 
told that it is red-hot iron. A suggested pain brings vaso- 
motor and other bodily changes that prove, as similar tests 
in the other cases prove, that simulation is impossible and 
the phenomena are real. These phenomena and those given 
below are no longer based on the mere reports of the 
'mesmerists,' but are the recognized property of legitimate 
psychology. 

Again, such suggestions may be for a future time, and 
get themselves performed only when a determined interval 
has elapsed; they are then called deferred or post-hypnotic 
suggestions. Post-hypnotic suggestions are those which in- 
clude the command not to perform them until a certain time 
after the subject has returned to his normal condition ; such 



152 Suggestion 

suggestions are — if of reasonably trifling character — 
actually carried out afterward in the normal state, although 
the person is conscious of no reason why he should act in 
such a way, having no remembrance whatever that he had 
received the suggestion when hypnotized. Such post-hyp- 
notic performances may be deferred by suggestion for many 
months. 

3. So-called exaltation of the mental faculties, especially 
of the senses : increased acuteness of vision, hearing, touch, 
memory, and the mental functions generally. By reason of 
this great ' exaltation,' hypnotized patients may get sugges- 
tions which are not intended, from experimenters, and dis- 
cover their intentions when every effort is made to conceal 
them. Often emotional changes in expression are discerned 
by them; and if it be admitted that their power of logical 
and imaginative insight is correspondingly exalted, there is 
practically no limit to the patient's ability to read, simply 
from physical indications, the mental states of those who 
experiment with him. 

4. So-called rapport. This term covers all the facts 
known, before the subject was scientifically investigated, 
by such expressions as ' personal magnetism,' 'will power' 
over the subject, etc. It is true that one particular operator 
alone may be able to hypnotize a particular patient ; and in 
this case the patient is, when hypnotized, open to sugges- 
tions only from this person. He is deaf and blind to every- 
thing enjoined by any one else. It is easy to see from what 
has already been said that this does not involve any occult 
nerve influence or mental power. A sensitive patient any- 
body can hypnotize, provided only that the patient have the 
idea or conviction that the experimenter possesses such 
power. Now, let a patient get the idea that only one man 
can hypnotize him, and that is the beginning of the hypnotic 



Hypnotic Suggestion 153 

suggestion itself. It is a part of the suggestion that a cer- 
tain personal rapport is necessary; so the patient must have 
this rapport. This is shown by the fact that, when such a 
patient is hypnotized, the operator in rapport with him can 
transfer the so-called control to any one else simply by sug- 
gesting to the patient that this third party can also hypnotize 
him. Rapport, therefore, and all the amazing claims of 
charlatans to powers of charming, stealing another's per- 
sonality, controlling his will at a distance — all such claims 
are explained, as far as they have anything to rest upon, by 
suggestion under conditions of mental hyperesthesia or 
exaltation. 

I may now add certain practical remarks which may tend 
to mark off the range of the phenomena more clearly. 

In general, any method which fixes the attention to a 
single stimulus long enough is probably sufficient to pro- 
duce hypnosis ; but the result is quick and profound in pro- 
portion as the patient has the idea that it is going to succeed, 
i.e. gets the suggestion of sleep. It may be said, therefore, 
that the elaborate performances, such as passes, rubbings, 
mysterious incantations, etc., often resorted to, have no physi- 
ological effect whatever, and only serve to work in the way 
of suggestion upon the mind of the subject. In view of this 
it is probable that any person in normal health can be hyp- 
notized, provided he is not too sceptical of the operator's 
knowledge and powers; and, on the contrary, any one can 
hypnotize another, provided he do not arouse too great 
scepticism, and is not himself wavering and clumsy. It is 
probable, however, that susceptibility varies greatly in degree, 
and that race exerts an important influence. Thus in Europe 
the French seem to be the most susceptible, and the English 
and Scandinavians the least so. The impression that weak- 
minded persons are most available is quite mistaken. On 



154 Suggestion 

the contrary, patients in the insane asylums, idiots, etc., are 
the most refractory. This is to be expected, from the fact 
that in these cases power of strong, steady attention is want- 
ing. The only one class of pathological cases which seem 
peculiarly open to the hypnotic influence is that of the 
hystero-epileptics, whose tendencies are toward extreme 
suggestibility. Further, one may hypnotize himself — so- 
called auto-suggestion — especially after having been put into 
the trance more than once by others. 1 

So-called ' criminal suggestions' may be made, with more 
or less effect, in the hypnotic state. Cases have been tried 
in the French courts, in which evidence for and against such 
influence of a third person over the criminal has been ad- 
mitted. The reality of the phenomenon, however, is in dis- 
pute. The Paris school claims that criminal acts can be 
suggested to the hypnotized subject which are just ascertain 
to be performed by him as any other acts. Such a subject 
will discharge a blank-loaded pistol at any one, when told to 

1 It is further evident that frequent hypnotization is very damaging if done 
by the same operator, since then the patient contracts a habit of responding 
to the same class of suggestions ; and this may influence his normal life. A 
further danger arises from the possibility that all suggestions have not been 
removed from the patient's mind before his awaking. Competent scientific 
observers always make it a point to do this. It is possible also that damaging 
effects result directly to a man from frequent hypnotizing; and this is prob- 
able to a degree, simply from the fact that the state is abnormal and, while it 
lasts, pathological. Consequently, all general exhibitions in public, as well 
as all individual exercises of this kind, should be prohibited by law, and the 
whole practical application, as well as observation of hypnosis should be 
left in the hands of physicians and scientific men who have proved their 
competence and fitness. 

Farther, Liegeois suggests — what is quite an unnecessary resource — 
that every child should be hypnotized by a special official, and the suggestion 
made to him, once for all, that no one under any circumstances shall be able 
to throw him into hypnosis again, In Russia, a decree (summer, 1893) per- 
mits physicians to practise hypnotism for purposes of cure under official cer- 
tificates. In France public exhibitions are forbidden. 



Hypnotic Suggestion 155 

do so, or stab him with a paper dagger. While admitting 
the facts, the Nancy theorists claim that the subject knows 
the performance to be a farce; gets suggestions of the un- 
reality of it from the experimenters, and so acquiesces. This 
is probably true, as is seen in frequent cases in which patients 
have refused, in the hypnotic sleep, to perform suggested acts 
which shocked their modesty, veracity, etc. This goes to 
show that the Nancy school are right in saying that while, 
in hypnosis, suggestibility is exaggerated to an enormous 
degree, still it has limits in the more well-knit habits, moral 
sentiments, social opinions, etc., of the subjects. And it 
further shows that hypnosis is probably, as they claim, a 
temporary disturbance, rather than a pathological condition 
of mind and body. 

There have been many remarkable and sensational cases 
of cure of disease by hypnotic suggestion reported, espe- 
cially in France. That hysteria in all its manifold mani- 
festations has been relieved is certainly true, but that any 
organic, structural disease has ever been cured by hypnotism 
is unproven. It is not regarded by medical authorities as an 
agent of much therapeutic value, and is rarely employed; 
but it is doubtful, in view of the natural prejudice caused 
by the pretensions of charlatans, whether its merits have 
been fairly tested. 1 

1 On the European continent it has been successfully applied in a great 
variety of cases; and Bernheim has shown that minor nervous troubles, 
insomnia, migraines, drunkenness, lighter cases of rheumatism, sexual and 
digestive disorders, together with a host of smaller temporary causes of pain — 
corns, cricks in back and side, etc. — may be cured or very materially alle- 
viated by suggestions conveyed in the hypnotic state. In many cases such 
are permanently effected with aid from no other remedies. In a number of 
great city hospitals, patients of recognized classes are at once hypnotized 
and suggestions of cure made. Liebault, the founder of the Nancy school, 
has the credit of having first made use of hypnosis as a remedial agent. It is 
also becoming more and more recognized as a method of controlling refractory 



156 Suggestion 

Theory. — Two rival theories are held as to the general 
character of hypnosis. The Paris school already referred to, 
led by Charcot, hold that it is a pathological condition which 
can be induced only in patients already mentally diseased, or 
having neuropathic tendencies. They claim that the three 
stages described above are a discovery of great importance. 1 
The so-called Nancy school, on the other hand, led by Bern- 
heim, deny the pathological character of hypnosis altogether, 
claiming that the hypnotic condition is nothing more than a 
special form of ordinary sleep brought on artificially by 
suggestion. Suggestion, they say, is only an exaggeration 
of an influence to which all persons are normally subject. 
All the variations, stages, curious phenomena, etc., of the 
Paris school, say they, can be explained by this ' suggestion ' 
hypothesis. The Nancy school is completely victorious, as 
far as the great mass of the facts are concerned. 2 

The facts show an intimacy of interaction between mind 
and body, to which current psychology in its psycho-physical 
theories is only beginning to do justice ; and it is this aspect 
of the whole matter which I would emphasize in this connec- 
tion. It will be observed that all the phases of ' suggestion' 
passed in review in earlier sections of this chapter get direct 
illustration from similar phenomena occurring in hypnosis. 
I need not cite them again in detail. The hypnotic condition 

and violent patients in asylums and reformatory institutions. It must be 
added, however, that 'in general' psychological theory rather than medical 
practice is seriously concerning itself with this subject. 

1 The best books on this side are, Binet and Fere, Animal Magnetism; 
Janet, Automatisme Psychologique; Charcot's medical treatises (CEuvres 
completes, Vol. IX.) ; numerous articles in the Revue Philosophique. 

2 Their best books are, Moll, Hypnotism; Bernheim, Suggestive Therapeu- 
tics; Etudes nouvelles sur V Hypnotisme; Ochorowicz, Mental Suggestion. 
Cf. my popular articles 'Among the Psychologists of Paris' and 'With 
Bernheim at Nancy' in the Nation (N.Y.), July 28 and Aug. 11, 1892, and 

Hypnotism' in the new edition (1894) of Johnson's Universal Cycloptzdia. 



Law of Dynamogenesis 157 

of consciousness may, therefore, be taken to represent the 
thing called ' suggestion ' most remarkably. 

§ 8. Law of Dynamogenesis 

The facts of suggestion now given may be generalized 
under a so-called 'law/ which current psychology and 
biology agree in accepting as a well-established principle 
of the manifestations of organic and mental life. The prin- 
ciple of contractility recognized in biology simply states that 
all stimulations to living matter, — from protoplasm to the 
highest vegetable and animal structures, — if they take effect 
at all, tend to bring about movements or contractions in the 
mass of the organism. This is now also safely established 
as a phenomenon of consciousness — that every sensation or 
incoming process tends to bring about action or outgoing 
process. The facts of suggestion now set forth may be 
taken as, in so far, an array of evidence in support of what 
we may call, once for all, Dynamogenesis. Certain practical 
illustrations of it are given in the chapters which immediately 
precede : they show also the sure foundation of the method 
of studying children which I have based upon it. I shall 
accordingly expect no opposition to the use of this principle 
as the foundation-stone of the theory of organic development 
developed subsequently in this work, however faulty my 
presentation of it may be in the eyes of competent critics in 
either of these sciences. 

In attempting, however, to reach some kind of formula 
of dynamogenesis we encounter a certain difficulty. For 
when we had occasion to inquire in an earlier place what 
the main character of all suggestion is, that character which 
constitutes its suggestion, we found definitions very con- 
flicting ; and gave as our own definition only the most general 



158 Suggestion 

description of the reaction called suggestive, i.e. that it in- 
volved consciousness and issues in a movement more or less 
closely associated in earlier experience with the particular 
stimulus in question. 1 

This, it is plain, constitutes suggestion a phenomenon of 
greater or less habit, taking hypnotic suggestion as type, in 
which prompt discharges in well-formed pathways is the strik- 
ing fact. Numerous instances among the facts reported in this 
chapter come to mind. The statement ordinarily made in the 
more recent psychologies, to the effect that the idea of a move- 
ment is already the beginning of that movement, serves to gen- 
eralize these facts, provided we understand by the 'idea of 
movement,' not merely the clear consciousness of a movement, 
but also the vaguest and most subconscious reminiscences, 
feelings, intimations of movement, which cluster or hang about 
or enter into, however meagrely, the state of mind which 
issues in the movement making up the suggested reaction. 

But it is just as evident, when we recall the various in- 
stances in detail, that they have another and different aspect. 
Very many suggestions seem to perform a function which is 
not exhausted when we say that they issue in movements. 
They issue in movements, it is true ; but not in exactly the 
movements and those alone which have been associated with 
these stimuli before. Many of them seem to beget new move- 
ments, by a kind of adaptation of the organism — movements 
which are an evident improvement upon those which the 
organism has formerly accomplished. 

To make this plain we have only to recall some cases from 

1 We may distinguish dynamogenesis from suggestion by saying that the 
former is the broader, — the fact that changes in movement always follow 
changes in stimulus. Suggestion, on the other hand, defines the particular 
change that issues from a particular stimulus of a sort that is accompanied 
by consciousness. 



Law of Dynamogenesis 159 

the reports made in this chapter and the earlier ones. The 
child learns handwriting by acting upon the suggestion which 
the copy set before him affords. How could he control his 
movements at all, if each suggestion called out only the move- 
ments which he had already learned? The child adapts 
himself again to persons, and differently to different persons, 
from week to week. How does he do this? Persons of 
course suggest action to him, but how does he manage to 
break up, in appropriate ways, the fixed organic tendencies to 
action in which we have found early bashfulness to consist? 
The child learns to estimate distance, and his visual experi- 
ences become, as we have seen, suggestions to him of hand 
movements remarkably adjusted to his reach and to the 
dimensions, etc., of things. How is this done? And so 
might more cases be cited. 

This aspect of suggestion opens up what is one of the main 
problems of this book to discuss, the theory of Accommodation. 
It is only in point here to show that this thing, accommodation, 
is a fact, and that it consists in some influence in the organism 
which works directly in the face of habit. Suggestion works 
to break up habit. 

We saw above, also, two views as to the presence and 
influence of consciousness in this matter of suggestion. Some 
theorists hold that there is no suggestion without conscious- 
ness; others that consciousness is not a necessary element. 
The dispute seems to turn upon the predominant recognition 
in reactions of one of the two tendencies, Habit or Accommo- 
dation. It is true and universal that consciousness tends 
to disappear from reactions as they are oftener repeated — 
as they become, that is, more habitual. The things we have 
learned to do best, most definitely, most exactly, must un- 
alterably in a word, these things require least thought, direc- 
tion, feeling, consciousness. So with our reflex and semi- 



1 60 Suggestion 

automatic actions : they come to go on, as pathological cases 
show, without the cortex of the brain, in cases when fainting 
or forgetfulness deprive us of all knowledge that we do them. 
On the other hand, we find that whenever there is accommo- 
dation — the breaking up of habit, the effort to learn, the 
acquirement of new movements, and co-ordinations of move- 
ment — there consciousness is present, and present in vivid 
and heightened form according as the habit fought against is 
fixed, and the road to the new acquisition an uphill road. 
The things most new, difficult, imperfect, hard to effect, these 
dwell in the very focus of our personal knowledge and at- 
tention. 

As I said some time ago, in summing up the two differ- 
ent principles: "Physiologically, Habit means readiness 
for function, produced by previous exercise of that function. 
. . . Psychologically, it means loss of oversight, diffusion 
of attention, subsiding consciousness. . . . Physiologically 
and anatomically, Accommodation means the breaking up of 
a habit, the widening of the organic for the reception or ac- 
commodation of a new condition. Psychologically, it means 
reviving consciousness, concentration of attention, voluntary 
control." * 

So far as we have now gone we have a right to use the prin- 
ciple of suggestion, and to illustrate the broader principle of 
dynamogenesis, whenever we mean to say simply that action 
follows stimulus. But when we come to ask what kind of 
action follows, in each case, each special kind of stimulus, we 
have two possibilities before us. A habit may follow, or an 
accommodation may follow. Which is it? And why is it 
one rather than the other? These are the questions of the 
theory of organic development, to which our next chapters are 
devoted. 

1 Handbook, Feeling and Willy p. 49. 



PART II 

BIOLOGICAL GENESIS 

CHAPTER VII 

The Theory of Development 1 

§ i. Organic Adaptation in General 

In the preceding discussions we have traced some phases 
of the development of consciousness. The two great prin- 
ciples of Habit and Accommodation have been noted, simply, 
and we have intimated incidentally that by them two great 
gains are made possible to the organism : first, the repetition 
of what is worth repeating, with the conserving of this worth : 
this is Habit ; and, second, the adaptation of the organism to 
new conditions, so that it secures, progressively, further useful 
reactions, which at an earlier stage would have been im- 
possible : this is Accommodation. It now remains to give 
these two principles a searching examination. 

Further, the fundamental fact of reaction itself, at what- 
ever stage it be looked at, is expressed by the principle of 
Dynamogenesis, which, when put broadly, reads: Every 
organic stimulus tends to bring about changes in movement. 
This we have illustrated in the preceding chapters. 

The psychological bearings of these principles are taken 

1 Development is here used in the general sense as covering both racial 
evolution and individual development. The problem of evolution as such 
is now explicitly treated in the work, Development and Evolution (1902). 

M l6l 



1 62 The Theory of Development 

up below. It remains to ask here whether we can go farther 
in a constructive way on the physiological side. 

A little reflection leads us to see that the main question 
of adaptation is still unanswered. It is evident that repe- 
titions plus accommodations give adaptations; and that ad- 
aptations involve, in some way, so-called ' selections.' Where 
in the function of the organism does the remarkable fact 
of selection come in? How does the organism select the 
proper things to accommodate itself to, and refuse the im- 
proper ? 

The real meaning of this question becomes clear when 
we put it differently. Considering the state of an organism 
at any moment, with its readiness to act in an appropriate 
fashion, — say a child's imitation of a movement, — the 
appropriateness of its action may be construed in either of two 
ways : either retrospectively or prospectively. By construing 
it retrospectively, I mean that an organism performs its ap- 
propriate function when it does what it has done before — 
what it is suited to do, however it may have come to be so 
suited. The child imitates my movement because his ap- 
paratus is ready for this movement. This is Habit ; it pro- 
ceeds by repetition. But when we come to ask how it got 
to be suited to do this function the first time, or how it can 
come to do a new function from now on, — how the child 
manages to imitate a new movement, one which he has never 
made before, — this is the prospective reference, and this ques- 
tion we must now try to answer. 

To illustrate from the highest sphere, that of the volun- 
tary learning of new actions : Suppose I see a man draw a 
picture, or paint a landscape, and realize that it represents 
a very useful accommodation of muscular movements, and 
then desire to imitate him. I am not able simply to tell my 
muscles to do it, or simply to will to do what he does. I find 



Organic Adaptation in General 163 

my muscles are chained down to what I have already learned, 
to what they have done before ; my actions, that is, have the 
retrospective reference. So the child sees me write a letter or 
cut a toothpick, and he is quite unable to do it. He must 
learn, we say. But that is just the question of prospective 
reference: how is he to learn? How is it possible for an 
organism to acquire any new adaptive movement whatever? 

When we come to look broadly at the biological series and 
take all the resources of modern evolution doctrine into ac- 
count, we find several ways in which the reactions of an organ- 
ism may get such a 'prospective reference,' all of which are 
partial statements of a more fundamental one, and each of 
which has its peculiar value in its own place in the phylo- 
genetic series. These different ways in which an organism 
' learns ' new accommodations may be set forth in order. 

1. Natural selection as operative directly upon individual 
organisms. If we suppose, at first, organisms capable of 
reacting to stimulations by random diffused movement, we 
may then suppose the stimuli to which they react to be some 
beneficial and some injurious. If the beneficial ones recur 
more frequently to some organisms, these would live rather 
than others to which damaging stimuli came more often. 
The former, therefore, would be selected ; and it amounts to 
the same thing as if organisms of neutral character had 
learned, each for itself, to react to certain beneficial stimuli 
only. This is the current Darwinian position. 

But we may go a step further. Assuming variations in 
organic forms, it is easy to see that some of them might react 
in a way to keep in contact with the stimulus, to lay hold on it, 
and so keep on reacting to it again and again — just as our 
rhythmic action in breathing keeps the organism in vital con- 
tact with the oxygen of the air. These organisms would get 
all the benefit or damage of the repetition or persistence of the 



164 The Theory of Development 

stimulation and of their own reactions, again and again ; and 
it is self-evident that the beneficial stimulations are the ones 
which should be maintained in this way, and that the organ- 
isms which did this would live. The organisms which reacted 
in such a way as to retain the damaging stimulations, on the 
other hand, by this same process, would aid nature in killing 
themselves. If this be true, only those organisms would 
survive which had the variation of retaining useful stimu- 
lations in what I have called in speaking of imitation else- 
where a ' circular way ' of reacting. Thus unicellular creatures 
of this particular kind were selected, we may suppose, as a 
matter of fact, from absolutely random-moving creatures, if 
any such existed — a point discussed below. And as all 
others died out in competition with them, it became a univer- 
sal property of vital organisms of any degree of development 
that they should react to retain their own vital stimulations. 
Now this again is exactly the same result as if originally neu- 
tral organisms had each for itself learned to make this partic- 
ular kind of reaction. The life principle has learned it, but 
with the help of the stimulating environment and natural 
selection. 1 

But the question remains : what kind of reaction would it 
be that such a creature would possess to accomplish this 
result? What would be the nature of the variation? Evi- 
dently the easiest answer to this question is, that consciousness 
with its selective property arises here, and by it new actions 
are selected. 2 But I do not see how consciousness could ac- 
complish the fact of selection, even though it arose as a varia- 
tion, until after it had itself experienced the reaction to be 

1 More is said of this below in § 2 of this chapter, and in Chap. IX., where 
particular evidence is cited. 

2 Something of this sort seems implied in the 'subjective selection' of 
J. Ward (art. 'Psychology,' in the Encycl Brit., 10th ed.). 



Organic Adaptation in General 165 

selected. This would mean that it had some property of 
selecting out during the organism's life history certain kinds 
of reaction already possible to this particular organism. But 
since it is possible for an organism to have the stimulus-re- 
taining reactions which I have described, simply by its own 
responses, this may be considered sufficient for its survival 
anyhow, whether it were conscious or not. So I see no argu- 
ment one way or the other as to the origin of consciousness at 
this first stage of natural selection. The case is different, 
however, when we come to consider development during the 
life history 0} the particular organism. 

2. Natural selection as operative upon different reactions 
of the same organism. The fact of ' life history ' is just what 
distinguishes an organism from what is a 'mechanical ar- 
rangement,' and not an organism. A steam engine has no 
life history because it makes no progress, it simply repeats 
a constant function. That engine survives which is best 
adapted, in its construction, to the function of an engine. 
That is the principle already cited. It is necessary to consider 
further how certain reactions of one single organism can be 
selected so as to adapt the organism better and give it a life 
history. Let us at the outset call this process 'functional 
selection,' 1 in contrast with the ' natural selection' of whole 
organisms. 

Our first principle would do no more than effect the survival 
of organisms which repeated or retained useful stimulations. 
If this worked alone, every change in the environment would 
weed out all life except those organisms which by accidental 
variation reacted already in the way demanded by the changed 

1 In earlier editions this was called ' Organic Selection,' but later (in 
Development and Evolution) this term was confined to the result of the 
process in directing the course of evolution (a matter, of course, already 
intended here). 



1 66 The Theory of Development 

conditions — in every case new organisms showing variations, 
not in any case new elements of life history in the old organ- 
isms. In order to the latter, we would have to conceive one 
of two things : either, first, an innate capacity of the organ- 
ism to anticipate and be ready for new conditions ; or second, 
some modification of the old reactions in an organism through 
the influence of new conditions, in such a way that this modi- 
fied reaction serves to retain the desirable stimulations of the 
environment, while the old ways of reacting do not. The first 
of these two conceptions might be realized in turn by either 
of two alternatives: first, by heredity; and second, by the 
special creation of each organism for its peculiar environment. 
But the first of these, besides being excluded by our hypothesis 
that we are at the beginning of the phylogenetic series, would 
leave over the question : How did the ancestors come to be 
adapted ? And the second calls upon us to give up the con- 
ception of phylogeny altogether. We are, accordingly, left 
to the view that the new stimulations brought by changes 
in the environment, themselves modify the reactions of an 
organism in such a way that these modified reactions serve 
to hold or repeat the new stimulations as far as they are good, 
and further, negatively, in such a way that the former reactions 
become under the new condition less useful or positively 
damaging. 

It may be said that the earlier application of natural selec- 
tion directly to the salvation of organisms meets this case also, 
provided organic forms arise by variation which are suited to 
react to the new environment. And it is possible to hold, 
I think, that some phylogenetic progress in development is 
secured in that way, a point which has further discussion 
below. But the facts show, at any rate, that individual or- 
ganisms do acquire new adaptations in their lifetime, and that 
is our first problem. If, in solving it, we find a principle 



Organic Adaptation in General 167 

which may also serve as a principle of race development, then 
we may possibly use it against the ' all-sufficiency of natural 
selection,' or in its support. 1 

The one kind of organic process which would accomplish 
the selection of reactions in an organism's life history is the 
one which we actually find — which is to say that our theory 
waits as it should upon facts. There is a process by which 
the theatre of the application of natural selection is transferred 
from the outside relations of the organism, its relations to its 
environment, to the inside relations of the organism. It 
takes the form of the functional adjustment of the life pro- 
cesses by variations in the motor responses, so that beneficial 
reactions are selected from the entire mass of responses. 

This process seems to involve — to state a further point 
— the neurological analogue of the hedonic consciousness ; and 
the two aspects in which the happy variation shows itself in 
the consciousness of the higher organisms are pleasure and 
pain. These points may be summed up for discussion in the 
general proposition: the life history of organisms involves 
from the start the presence of the organic analogue of the 
hedonic or pleasure-pain consciousness. 

From what has been said it is clear that, in order to life 
history in an organism, it must have in its central processes 
not only the facile function required by habitual discharge, 

1 This passage anticipates the explicit development of 'organic selection' 
in later publications — the view, that is, that individual accommodations, 
by supplementing certain variations, guide evolution in definite lines. 

I know a further objection may be made, and it may be as well to state it 
here, while reserving its discussion for a later place (§ 3 of this chapter). 
It may be said that even in the life of the individual new actions are not 
acquired ; they simply serve in the individual to show the details of the varia- 
tion which the individual has got congenitally. On that view the new func- 
tions do not secure gains for the following generation, but only put in evidence 
the variations already secured over the earlier generation : so certain critics 
of organic selection, e.g. Whitman, Plate, etc. 



1 68 The Theory of Development 

but also some means of anticipating new stimulations, and 
so of utilizing them to its own advantage. The empirical 
analysis of pleasure and pain states requires the recognition 
of these two facts, on any theory of the hedonic consciousness, 
i.e. first, pleasure accompanies normal psycho-physical pro- 
cess, or its advancement by new stimulations which are vitally 
good; and second, pain accompanies abnormal psycho- 
physical process, or the anticipation of its being brought about 
by new stimulations which are vitally bad. 1 This is general- 
ized in the principles, current since Bain insisted upon them, 
that pain is indicative of a physiological process which is in- 
hibitory of the function which occasions the pain, and pleas- 
ure, on the other hand, advances its corresponding function ; 
although, as I aim to show in the following pages, the for- 
mulation of Bain requires important modifications. In a 
later place I speak further of the rise of consciousness as this 
view seems to implicate it. 2 

Advantage has now been seen to lie in reactions by which 
certain stimulations are retained or repeated and certain 
others avoided. Now the former are the reactions to stimu- 
lations which give pleasure, the latter reactions to those which 
give pain. The general scheme of Meynert, which identifies 
the pleasure-giving process with the central innervation of 
outreaching movements, and the pain-giving process similarly 
with that of withdrawing movements, — expansions on the 
one hand, and contractions on the other, — affords, disre- 
garding details which I need not now dwell upon, support to 
this requirement. 3 Richet expresses the general facts very 

1 Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, II., Chaps. V., XI. (in substance). 

2 Cf. § 4 of this chapter. 

3 Popular -wis senschajtliche Vortrage, pp. 41 ff. Meynert's theory has 
recently been given some experimental support by Munsterberg, Beitrage zur 
exper. Psych., Heft 4. For the detailed treatment of such so-called ' Organic 
Imitations,' see below, Chap. IX. 



Organic Adaptation in General 169 

clearly ; beginning with pain, he says : " There takes place a 
series of general movements of flexion, as if the animal wished 
to make itself smaller and to offer less surface to the pain. . . . 
With man, as with all other animals, we find the same general 
movements of flexion and extension, corresponding to feelings 
of pain and pleasure. Pleasure corresponds to a movement 
of spreading out, dilatation, extension; on the contrary, in 
pain we draw back, shut ourselves up, by general movements 
of flexion.'' * 

It may be objected, however, that this does not meet the 
need of anticipatory adjustment; and such an objection to 
Meynert's own view is, I think, well taken. Admitting the 
probable truth of the theory of Meynert as far as it goes, and 
its essential conformity to the requirements of a true theory 
of motor development, we may further find from the two cor- 
respondences mentioned the element which is still lacking, 
and which can only be supplied by an adequate theory of the 
physical basis of pleasure and pain. 

If development is by repetition, and if repetition can be 
secured, apart from accident, only by a functional variation of 
the type called 'circular reaction/ or one which repeats or 
retains its own stimulation, then a new stimulus can be ac- 
commodated to only within the limits inside of which the 
organ can prepare itself, on the basis of former processes, to 
bring about such a reaction as will tend to retain this kind 
of stimulus for itself. This is accomplished, in the whole 
range of motor accommodations , jrom the protozoa 2 which 
swarm to the light to the most difficult feat of the acrobat, by 
what we may generalize under the phrase ' law of excess ' ; it 
is an application within the organism of the principle upon 

1 V Homme et V Intelligence, p. 9, quoted by Ward. 

2 This is now interestingly confirmed by the valuable researches and con- 
clusions of Jennings {Behaviour of Lower Organisms, 1906). 



170 The Theory of Development 

which the natural selection of particular organisms is secured 
— the principle commonly known as ' over-production.' 
But generally, the law of 'excess' maybe stated somewhat 
as follows : the accommodation 0] an organism to a new stimu- 
lation is secured^ apart from happy accidents, by the continued 
or repeated action 0) that stimulation, and this repetition is 
secured, not by the selection beforehand of this stimulation nor 
of appropriate movements, but by the proximate reinstatement of 
it by a discharge of the energies of the organism, concentrated 
as far as may be for the excessive stimulation of the organs 
most nearly fitted by former habit to get this stimulation again} 
Assuming that such a supplement to the current psycho- 
physical theories of pleasure-pain is necessary, and that the 
details are left open of what the actual cellular processes are 
by which this ' excess discharge ' is secured, our task is to 
explain and justify this law of excess. This we may endeav- 
our to do, dividing the cases of Accommodation or Adapta- 
tion into three heads, — the word ' adaptation ' being used as 
in biology for the fixed results of accommodation processes. 
We will have to show that the three great stages of adapta- 
tion are brought under the formula of 'functional selection' 
by means of the auxiliary principle of 'excess.' 2 To make 
these three spheres plain to psychologists we may designate 
them as, first, ' biological adaptations ' (modifications of struc- 
ture, of instinct, the correlation of parts, and organic adapta- 
tions in general) ; second, the reactions in which so-called 
'reflex attention' dominates (simple imitation, suggestive 
accommodation and control, the learning of infants short 
of voluntary effort) ; third, the conscious selection of ends 

1 The negative of concentration or its reverse supplies the conditions of re- 
treat from a damaging stimulation — I suppose some form of draining, with 
Darwin's 'antithetic' motor action and Meynert's Abwehrbewegungen. 

2 Natural selection being of course assumed, working to select individuals 
of the 'accommodating' type. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 171 

and their pursuit by volition (voluntary attention, effortful 
action, 'conduct'). These three forms of adaptation are 
treated in the course of this work under the headings, re- 
spectively, of l Organic Imitation,' 'Conscious Imitation,' 
and 'Volition.' If successfully made out, this will present 
to us a theory of unity in the motor life, and an addition to 
the evolution theory acceptable to psychologists. 

Before proceeding further, however, it may be well to state 
the theory hitherto principally propounded and advocated by 
psychologists, as well as by biologists, and to examine it in 
view of the requirements now indicated; this comparison 
will also serve to bring out our own positions more clearly. 

§ 2. Current Biological Theory 0} Adaptation 

It is clear that we are led to two relatively distinct ques- 
tions: questions which are now familiar to us when put in 
the terms covered by the words ' phylogenesis' and ' ontogene- 
sis.' First, how has the development of organic life proceeded, 
showing constantly, as it does, forms of greater complexity 
and higher adaptation? This is the phylogenetic question; 
and as we should expect, this is the question over which 
biologists have had their most earnest and lasting controversy. 
This is also the question that has mainly interested biologists. 
But the second question, the ontogenetic question, is of equal 
importance : the question, how does the individual organism 
manage to adjust itself better and better to its environment? 
How is it that we, or the brute, or the amoeba, can learn to do 
anything? This is the question which has interested psy- 
chologists, so far as they have shown interest in genetic 
theories — an interest now greatly increased. 

This latter problem is the most urgent, difficult, and inter- 
esting question of the new genetic psychology. How can 



172 The Theory of Development 

an organism, whether with or without consciousness, ever, 
under any circumstances, get a new and better-adapted func- 
tion? This is the inquiry which I wish to take up first, 
describing the only view which has much currency and criti- 
cising it. For in answer to this question there is practically 
only one theory in the field, that of Bain, in his latest formu- 
lation of which he shows its conformity to evolution require- 
ments. It is based upon Mr. Spencer's earlier theory, but 
has certain modifications which Mr. Bain states in a passage 
which I quote below. I shall hereafter refer to the view now 
described as the ' Spencer-Bain theory.' 

Mr. Bain's view is this: the organism is endowed with 
spontaneous movement, a certain spontaneity of action which 
must be assumed. Certain of these spontaneous movements 
happen by ' lucky chance ' to succeed in bringing the organism 
into some special adjustment, better exposure, better protec- 
tion, easier function, etc. ; these movements are accompanied 
by pleasure. The pleasure lingers in the consciousness of 
the creature in connection with the memory of the particular 
movement which brought it ; and the memory of the pleasure 
serves to incite the creature to execute the same movement 
again, whenever the same external conditions present them- 
selves. The repetitions thus secured serve to fix the new 
adjustment as a permanent acquisition on the part of the 
organism. 

It is evident that on this view of adaptation, Mr. Bain 
assumes consciousness with pleasure and pain in the organism 
and also assumes an association between the sense of the 
pleasure and the sense or mental picture of the movement 
which brought' the pleasure. A third supposition should 
also be especially noted, — because it is usually so tacit an 
assumption as to go quite unremarked, — namely, that the 
circumstances or environment remain sufficiently constant to 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 173 

enable the creature to use the association between the pleas- 
ure and the movement. He must have various movements 
stimulated over again as before, and among them the one 
which before gave the pleasure, in order that the pleasant 
memory of this particular one may be suggested along with 
the other possible ones. Granting these assumptions, we 
have in the excess discharge a means of ' selecting' the useful 
movements. 

The order of the ' factors of adaptation,' as we may call the 
elements involved in Bain's scheme, is clearly this : random 
movement, chance-accommodation, pleasure, memory of 
pleasure associated with memory of movement, adapted 
movement. In this order I wish to note especially the dis- 
tinction between adaptive movement, i.e. the movement which 
by chance secures the accommodation, and adapted move- 
ment, i.e. the movement which follows by association when 
the pleasure is recalled in memory. 

Passing now to Mr. Spencer's theory, we find a purely 
physiological construction. 1 He supposes that originally 
simple contractility of protoplasm leads to a diffused con- 
tractile discharge throughout the mass; this results in ran- 
dom movements of great variety. Some of these movements 
are by chance more adaptive than others, and by this fact a 
larger draught of energy tends to concentrate itself upon the 
channels of discharge which carry out these movements. 
This wave of l heightened nervous energy ' fixes an anatomical 
'path of least resistance,' which so comes to represent the 
habits and permanent adaptations of the organism. 

The coincidence of these two views may be best expressed 
in the terms of one of the authors. Mr. Bain writes: 2 
" My leading postulates — Spontaneity, the Continuing of an 

1 Spencer, Princ. of Psychology, I., §§ 227 ff. 

2 Emotions and Will, 3d ed., 1888, pp. 318 f. 



1 74 The Theory of Development 

action that gives pleasure, and the Contiguous growth of an 
accidental connection — are all involved in Mr. Spencer's 
explanation of the development of our activity. . . . The 
spontaneous commencement is expressed by him as a diffused 
discharge of muscular energy (Psychology, Vol. L, p. 544). 
He considers that as nervous structures become more com- 
plicated, every special muscular excitement is accompanied 
by some general muscular excitement. Along with the con- 
centrated discharge to particular muscles, the ganglionic 
plexuses inevitably carry off a certain diffused discharge to 
the muscles at large; and this diffused discharge may lead 
to the happy movement suitable to some emergency. 

"This is the doctrine -of Spontaneity in a very contracted 
shape ; too contracted in my judgement for the requirements 
of the case. I have adverted to the inferiority of the dif- 
fused wave accompanying a central process, whether active 
or emotional, such as is here assumed. If another source 
of chance muscular movements can be assigned, and if that 
source presents advantages over the diffused discharge, we 
ought to include it in our hypothesis. . . . Mr. Darwin 
expresses what is tantamount to the spontaneity of move- 
ment thus: 'When the sensorium is strongly excited, the 
muscles of the body are generally thrown into violent action.' 
'Involuntary and purposeless contractions of the muscles 
of the chest and glottis, excited in the above manner, may 
have first given rise to the emission of vocal sounds' (Ex- 
pression, pp. 82, 83). This is spontaneous commencement 
under circumstances of strong excitement; but I have en- 
deavoured to show that excitement is unnecessary, and that 
spontaneity is a fact of the ordinary working of the organs. 

"The second indispensable requisite to voluntary acqui- 
sition, as well as to the consolidation of instinctive powers, 
is some force that clenches and confirms some successful 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 175 

chance coincidence. Mr. Spencer's view of this operation 
is given thus: ' After success will immediately come pleas- 
urable sensations with an accompanying large draught of 
nervous energy towards the organs employed.' 'The lines 
of communication through which the diffused discharge 
happened in this case to pass have opened a new way to 
certain wide channels of escape ; and consequently they have 
suddenly become lines through which a larger quantity of 
molecular motion is drawn, and lines which are so rendered 
more permeable than before.' 

"Here is assumed the Law of Pleasure and Pain. Pleasure 
is accompanied by heightened nervous energy, which nervous 
energy finds its way to the lines of communication that have 
been opened up by the lucky coincidence. There is assumed 
as a consequence the third of the above postulates — the con- 
tiguous adhesion between the two states, the state of feeling 
and the appropriate muscular state. The physical expression 
given by Mr. Spencer to this result is, I have no doubt, cor- 
rect — ' the opening up of lines of discharge that draw off 
large amounts of molecular motion.'" 

Bain's three postulates, as here summed up by himself, 
touch the inevitable requirements of a theory, in my opin- 
ion, as will be seen from the foregoing pages. For there 
are three requirements: first, to get movements (his ' spon- 
taneity,' as a substitute for Spencer's 'diffused discharge' 
and Darwin's 'purposeless contractions'); second, to get 
selections made from these movements (his 'accidental 
success,' of certain movements); and third, 'some force 
that clenches and confirms some successful chance coinci- 
dence' ('pleasure and pain,' identified with Spencer's 'height- 
ened nervous energy which finds its way to the lines of 
communication that have been opened up by the lucky 
coincidence'). 



176 The Theory of Development 

But it is evident that the truth — if it be true — of ' spon- 
taneity' in developed organisms does not invalidate or even 
supersede Spencer's ' diffused discharge'; for the phylo- 
genetic explanation of spontaneity — the question how did 
spontaneity itself arise — must rest on some such hypoth- 
esis as Spencer's theory of discharge, or of contractility 
in response to stimulation. So we may pass that postulate 
over without further question.- But the second question 
comes : given movements — by either of these principles, 
both, or neither — how are some of them selected? Here, 
again, the answer comes from both authors: by chance 
adaptation. Of course, we are told, some of these random 
movements are likely to be more adaptive than others. 
Suppose the creature is suffering for want of food, the move- 
ments which hit upon food are then the adaptive ones. These 
are then in so far selected. This we may admit as most likely. 
But in how far — again it is asked — is the organism able to 
do them a second time? How are these successful, good, 
advantageous movements kept up? 'Pleasure and pain' 
is at once on everybody's lips, Bain's, Spencer's, et al. The 
adaptive movement gives pleasure : this secures the repetition. 
But, yet again, how? Evidently by association, we are told. 
The lucky movement gives pleasure; it is done again to 
secure the pleasure again, for of all the movements which are 
incipiently stimulated by the environment, that one which is 
remembered as having given pleasure, that one is done again. 
The movements must be incipiently stimulated, that is, the en- 
vironment must be pretty constant, as was said above, for other- 
wise we may say : for an association one term must be given ; 
either the pleasure to bring up the movement, or the move- 
ment to bring up the pleasure. We must have the presence 
of the movement in some kind of possibility, in order to get 
the sense of the pleasure to be derived from doing it. Here 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 177 

Mr. Spencer's theory, on the organic side, gives us an answer ; 
and Bain, as it seems to me, adopts it as a supplement, in 
the quotation made above from his third edition, directly from 
Spencer. "Here is assumed," says Bain, "the 'law of pleas- 
ure and pain.' Pleasure is accompanied by heightened ner- 
vous energy, which nervous energy finds its way to the lines 
of communication that have been opened up by the lucky 
coincidence." 

But now we reach a point in the development of this theory 
at which difficulties begin to appear. It is evident that two 
cases are possible in the matter of the environment: the 
case in which the stimulus calling out the lucky movement 
continues to act, and the case in which this stimulus stops 
acting. Suppose it be light — sunlight — falling on a pro- 
tozoon, and a movement results which exposes the crea- 
ture better to the light, and this exposure is beneficial 
and pleasurable. It is clear that the sunlight may continue 
upon it, and so keep up its good influence ; or, on the other 
hand, the sun may draw away and be succeeded by gloom. 
This theory, it is evident, makes the continuance of the 
adaptation dependent upon the continuance or repetition 
of the stimulus. How could the organism remember that it 
elongated itself by chance upward, let us say, in the light, and 
that this gave pleasure, if there be no longer any light to sug- 
gest the pleasure ? If it do it in the dark, it again exposes itself 
to chance ; for such an elongation in the dark may be the very 
reaction which will destroy it. So all adaptive reactions on 
this theory can be adapted reactions — real adjustments, ac- 
quisitions — only in conditions of relative regularity and 
frequency of stimulation. 

This theory, therefore, leaves the organism to the risk 
of getting repetitions of stimulus by accident; just as it 
got the adaptation by the chance of a lucky movement, 



178 The Theory of Development 

so it can keep it only by the chance of the recurrence of 
the stimulus. The organism waits the second time upon 
chance, just as it did the first time. The postulate that 
pleasure from the lucky movement is the agent of adapta- 
tion, succeeds, therefore, only when the environing agencies 
of stimulation are regular and constantly available. 

This necessity of regularity of conditions is put by Mr. 
Joseph Jastrow in these words.: "The existence of habits 
implies an environment sufficiently constant to repeatedly 
present to the organism the same or closely similar con- 
ditions." * And writers generally assume, if they do not say, 
that the organism is developed by the repetition of stimula- 
tions which storm it, by the laws of their own action, coming 
to act upon it while it remains in its place to be acted upon. 
Complexity of adaptation is then secured by the compounding 
of the reactions which are sustained in this way. 2 

Again, another question must be asked in regard to the 
postulate of 'heightened nervous energy' which both Spencer 
and Bain make the physiological counterpart of pleasure. 
The pleasure resulting from the first accidentally adaptive 
movement issues in a heightened nervous discharge toward 
the organs which made the movement, a discharge which finds 
its way to the same channels as before, and so makes it 
likely that the same movement will be repeated, the external 
conditions remaining the same. By these discharges this 
movement gets, of course, a better chance of being performed 
on subsequent occasions. So the organism fixes its adap- 
tations. 

Let us accept this and say that something equivalent to 
'heightened nervous energy' alone can explain the repeti- 

1 Popular Science Monthly, November, 1892. 

2 More is said of this compounding tendency, below, Chap. VIII., § 4. 
Cf. Spencer's exposition of it, loc. cit., Vol. I., §§ 231 ff. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 1 79 

tion of reactions which are both useful and pleasurable. 
We may call this, then, for convenience, the principle of 
'Motor Excess,' and say that pleasure and pain can be 
agents of accommodation and development only if the 
one, pleasure, carry with it the phenomenon of ' motor excess,' 
and the other, pain, the reverse — probably some form of 
inhibition or of antagonistic contraction. 

Our question then is this: What is the reason that the 
movements which are accidentally more adaptive than 
others, give pleasure? Is there anything in one move- 
ment, as such, more than another, that it should give 
pleasure? How can it matter to the protozoon, for exam- 
ple, whether it elongate itself upward, or flatten itself down- 
ward, that it should feel better in one case than in the 
other ? 

The only answer evidently is, that the pleasure is not in 
the movement in itself, but in what the movement gets for 
the organism. The protozoon may elongate itself upward 
without pleasure possibly in the dark, or with positive pain. 
The plant may turn upward only in the light (heliotro- 
pism), and then downward only in the dark (geotropism) 
to show its adaptations. It is the sunlight which the creature 
gets from its elongation upward that gives the pleasure. 1 

Yet that the current theory, as held by psychologists, 
makes the first adaptive movement accidental, and the pleas- 
ure which serves as agent of accommodation to result only 
from that movement, may be seen from such statements as 
the following from Hoflding, who accepts Bain's postulate 

1 A case which fulfils the details of this illustration is to be found in certain 
shellfish (mussels) which respond variably to light and shade. Some species 
withdraw when shadows are thrown upon them; certain others withdraw 
when light falls on them ; and yet others respond by contraction to both light 
and shade. See Nagel, in Biol. Centralb., XIV., 1894, p. 385. 



180 The Theory of Development 

of spontaneity in developed organisms. He says: "There 
may be accommodation even before consciousness by means 
of reflex movement. In this, movement is not immediately 
brought about by the internal state, but by a stimulus from 
the external world, or from a part of the organism." * 

As soon as it is criticised, this bald position becomes irra- 
tional, as every one will admit : for the action of the sunlight 
it is which stimulates the organic and vital processes, aids 
nutrition, sets the organism into its life rhythms, etc. This is 
universally the case. It is what the organism gets by the 
movements or without movement, that ministers to its life; 
that is the original pleasure-giving thing, not the mere fact 
of one movement rather than another. 

And yet, as evident as this is, I cannot find it anywhere 
clearly brought out in the literature of this topic. It may 
have been taken for granted by every one, we could well 
believe, except that when we come to generalize this view, we 
find that the theory of adaptation takes on a meaning very 
different from that usually understood. If it is the organism's 
stimulations, such as food supply, contact with the oxygen of 
the air, equilibrium under the action of gravity, etc. — if it 
is such things which give the organic bases of pleasure — 
then these it is which serve to bring about the motor excess 
discharge and produce the abundance and variety of move- 
ments necessary to selection. But if so again, then we do not 
need the first accidentally adaptive movement to give pleasure, 
and through pleasure so to secure the excess discharge. 

The old theory turns the case completely over and stands it 
on its head. 2 We reach, in fact, from this consideration a 
new construction in which our organism begins with a sus- 
ceptibility to certain organic stimulations, such as food, oxy- 

1 Outlines of Psychology, p. 311. 

2 Cf. Spencer, loc. ciL, I., p. 545. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 181 

gen, etc. ; these when present give pleasure ; the pleasure is, 
physiologically considered, a heightened vitality in the central 
nuclear processes ; this heightened, central vitality issues in a 
motor excess discharge; from the resulting abundant and 
varied movements of this excess discharge those are selected 
which bring more of these vital stimulations again ; and these 
finally keep up the vitality of the organism, and by the re- 
peated excess movements provide for constantly progressive 
adaptations. 

This position, it is plain, does not rule out the old inter- 
pretation entirely — the view that it is the effect of accidentally 
adapted movements to give pleasure. For in saying that 
it is the stimulus or sense process which gives pleasure, ac- 
cording as it is vitally beneficial or not, I do not rule out any 
kind of stimulus or sense process. Muscular sensation — ■ 
the sense process of accomplished movement — takes its 
place as one such process among others, and a very important 
one. In so far as the exercise of muscle in high organisms, 
or the mere fact of contractility itself in the lower, is vitally 
good, in so far it also gives pleasure, and this pleasure serves 
to issue in excess discharge to the same regions again. But 
this is a very different view from that which says that the 
excess movements corresponding to pleasure all follow from 
accidental movements which are lucky. 

The Spencer-Bain view seems then to say that one kind 
of sense process, that which reports movements, and move- 
ments only of a particular kind — those which happen to be 
adaptive by chance — that this one kind of sense process gives 
pleasure, while all others do not. But why should this be? 
All processes of stimulation going into the organic centres 
ought to follow the same law. If one kind, in as far as it 
serves to heighten vitality, for that reason brings up the energies 
of the reacting centre to the pitch of a ' heightened nervous 



1 82 The Theory of Development 

discharge/ why should not any other stimulating process 
which serves to heighten vitality do the same thing? And 
when we come to press the case more closely and ask why 
it is that only one class of movements — a logical class merely, 
those which happen to be adaptive — do in reality so act, the 
only practical criterion is after all, on this theory, just that 
which I am urging, i.e. that those movements only are adap- 
tive which secure a new element of sense process, such as 
light, chemical action, food stimulus, etc., in addition to 
the ordinary advantage of movement itself which all move- 
ments, qua movements, have in common. 

So far, we have spoken of pleasure, but the same holds, 
verbis mutatis, of pain. Let us ask this question: Where 
in the entire series of events constituting a reaction accom- 
panied by pain — stimulus, central process, movement — 
does the pain come in, before or after the first adapted move- 
ment, i.e. the movement that has an inhibiting influence 
somehow upon its own further performance? The whole 
phraseology of Spencer and Bain would serve to make us 
think that it came in only after a movement so unlucky as to be 
ill-adapted, the pain being part of the effect of the movement, 
so that, by the memory of the pain thus got, the movement is 
in future inhibited. The pain got from the movement serves 
in memory to warn us not to repeat the movement. 1 But here 
I take issue blankly, contending that it comes in by and in the 
stimulus and before its discharge in movement, warning us not 
to move so as to repeat that stimulus. It is by this 'warning,' 

1 In support of this, see Spencer, Prin. of Psych., Vol. I., §§ 227 f., § 232, 
§ 237. Bain's view is seen in the quotation given above. Dr. Ward seems 
to be clear of this criticism, as regards the function of the pain-process, as 
actually issuing in movements which secure pleasure or bring less pain. I 
can get no consistent conception, however, from Ward, since he implicates 
attention even when, by express claim, he is discussing 'only the original 
evolution.' — Encycl. Brit., Art. ' Psychology,' p. 73. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 183 

— which is in organic terms an actual lowering of vitality and 
consequent dampening of movement, or production of con- 
trary movements, — that organism tends to avoid the repe- 
tition of this stimulation. 

Let us take for scrutiny the customary illustration — the 
one which James uses, for example, in explaining the ' Mey- 
nert scheme' of nervous action. A child thrusts his finger 
in a candle-flame, and is burned : he thrusts no more, but 
shrinks. Here the doctrine of Spencer, Bain, and many 
others, seems to make the function of the pain the inhibition 
of the thrusting movement, as itself undesirable. But surely 
the case is very different. Is this movement in itself un- 
desirable? Is it not undesirable only under these or similar 
circumstances? The inhibiting effect and the pain are 
brought about by the burn, and the recurrence of that — ■ 
that is the thing to be prevented. The thrusting movement 
is a mere incident. Suppose the candle is brought up against 
the child instead of the reverse : it then shrinks just the same. 
But in this case there has been no forward movement giving 
a pain, by the memory of which, on the theory in question, 
the shrinkage or stoppage of thrusting is caused. No doubt 
the child has a habit of shrinking from pain-causing things ; 
but what I claim is just this, that it is pain-causing things, 
not pain-producing movements, in reference to which it has 
acquired this habit. 

So far therefore, let us bear clearly in mind, our outcome 
is this: we accept from the Spencer-Bain theory the fact of 
adaptation by selection from excessive movements, and also 
the view that the forerunner or cause of these excessive 
movements is a central process which is the organic analogue 
of pleasure ; * but we raise an objection to that theory which 

1 Omitting the negative or pain side, which, apart from details, proceeds in 
a parallel way; cf. Chap. XVI., § 3. 



184 The Theory of Development 

seems to us insuperable: The objection that it makes this 
pleasure, and through it all adaptation, result from one kind 
of sense-stimulus, that of the organism's own contraction, 
and not from others, with no ground whatever for this dis- 
crimination against the ordinary stimulations of the environ- 
ment, such as light, heat, oxygen, food-supply, etc., which 
are from the first most vitally necessary for all growth. 

To obviate this objection we must hold that all stimula- 
tions which heighten vitality give the organic basis of pleasure 
and by this issue in excessive movements. This seems 
natural, easy, and in fact inevitable. This is what our theory 
does. It says : given any reason for a better central organic 
state of things, this better state of things shows itself, by 
the law of dynamogenesis, in the greater ease, facility, and 
variety of movements, which facilitate the adjustments and 
so the adaptations of the organism. 

This is the first innovation which the theory which I have 
sketched above proposes. While securing the better basis 
for adaptation generally, however, this does not interfere 
with the function of pleasure which Bain desiderates — i.e. 
"some force that clenches and confirms, some successful 
chance coincidence" 1 [of movement]. For as I have said, 
the successful chance coincidence would still give pleasure 
and the same association would hold between this pleasure 
and the particular movement which secured it. And under 
regular conditions of stimulation this association would 
suffice to draught off the increased energy of the pleasure 
process into the channels of the movement which is asso- 
ciated with the pleasure ; for the organic basis of an asso- 
ciation must be some kind of a connective pathway between 
the seats of the things which are associated. 

A later utterance of Bain's comes nearer, as far as I am 

1 See the quotation from Bain above. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 185 

sure that I understand it, to the recognition of this view of 
the general value of pleasure and pain in the theory of 
organic accommodation. He says in his last edition : 1 
" The law that a movement bringing pain tends to be arrested, 
and a movement bringing pleasure to be promoted, is with 
some plausibility referred to a general principle of nervous 
action, whereby, seeing that pleasure is in so many cases 
associated with increase, and pain with diminution, of vital 
energy, there should grow out of this circumstance a dispo- 
sition of pleasure to feed, and of pain to sap, its own produc- 
ing energy [by an adaptation of movements by which the 
stimulation giving pleasure is retained, on one hand, and that 
giving pain broken with, on the other hand]. There is an 
undoubted consistency between the two sides of our being 
on this hypothesis [of what we have called an 'imitative' 
or ' circular activity '].... The hypothesis in question de- 
mands for its adequacy a far-reaching, although not in- 
credible or impossible, assumption — viz., that the tendency 
of pleasure, through the medium of its physical accompani- 
ments, to heighten for the moment the activities of the frame- 
work in general, somehow finds a way to concentrate upon 
the specific movement adapted to the precise case [i.e. 
adapted to bring the organism into continued relation to 
the pleasure -giving stimulus]. This is a very large demand 
in itself and would seem to need a large number of chance 
experiments [or a congenital variation producing a bifurcate 
division of movements into 'expanding' and 'contracting' 
respectively] before the lucky coincidence is reached. The 
hypothesis is by no means impossible ... its natural place 
is under the hypothesis of Evolution, where it is an im- 
portant, if not indispensable, item." 2 

1 Bain, Senses and Intellect, 4th ed., 1894, pp. 328 f. 

2 1 think it well to say that Professor Bain in a private letter wrote me that 



1 86 The Theory of Development 

We now find ourselves introduced to another class of 
facts, which, when interpreted, lead us to suggest another 
modification of the theory of adaptation. 

It is evident that we have been dealing with the question 
of ontogenetic adaptation so far, the question as to how 
the individual organism manages to get new adaptations. 
Later on we may ask how the species can profit by the 
accommodations secured by the individual. But when we 
come to view the general fact of race adaptation as a whole, 
the question which we have just been discussing takes on a 
further interest. 

It has been needful to assume that in the simplest organic 
forms which have contractility, and which are able to adapt 
themselves by their movements to their environment — that 
in such forms the analogue of pleasure is a central excess 
process which discharges itself in movement. The question 
for phylogenesis, then, which comes upon us is this: how 
did this condition of things arise, and what form must we 
hold these excess movements to take? 

This question Mr. Bain seems to beg. His principle of 
' spontaneity ' is his starting-point ; and he does not see that 
spontaneity must, as has been said above, itself be construed 
in terms of some form of process which accounts for an 
organism's expenditures of energy derived from such stimu- 
lations as its food-processes, etc. HofTding says in reference 
to the fact of spontaneity: 1 "The internal changes, which 

he was taking account of my article on 'Imitation' in Mind (January, 1894). 
As he makes no reference, however, to my paper in his book, I may be wrong 
in thinking this to be a passage in which he had my article in view. I may 
even be wrong in thinking that the 'hypothesis' he speaks of is capable of 
being interpreted in the way I have done in the additions made in brackets 
in the text. In that case, the quotation may be read simply as a further expo- 
sition of my own views put largely in Professor Bain's words. 
1 Outlines of Psychology, p. 309. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 187 

set free potential energy, must, in their turn, depend on the 
function of nourishment. The spontaneous movement of 
living creatures is possible only because life itself is an un- 
interrupted process of taking in and using up certain con- 
stituents. Absolute spontaneity would be a consumption of 
one's own fat." It is evident that Bain never brings the 
genetic point of view into his theories, except by the merest 
attempts at grafting the evolution idea upon the trunk of his 
analysis of the actions of developed organisms. 

Mr. Spencer, on the contrary, does attempt to account for 
the rise of the heightened nervous process in individuals. 
He considers it a concentration of the energies of reaction 
into particular pathways ; and so, indeed, it must be. But to 
him, also, it is an ontogenetic acquirement. It follows upon 
the first lucky adaptive movement, as we have seen above. 

This account we now see to be inadequate, since it as- 
sumes, as has been shown at length, that when certain 
stimulations are present — stimulations covered by the vague 
word 'adjustments,' which the lucky movement happens to 
strike — these stimulations serve by their action to heighten 
the central processes. So the whole question remains quite 
unanswered as to why any stimulations do thus heighten 
the central processes, and so give an excess discharge in 
movement. Of course, the answer seems to be that those 
processes of stimulation do this to which the organism is 
already accommodated — those under the action of which 
it has come to be what it is — its food -supply, oxygen, 
chemical agents, gravity, contacts, etc., etc. 

The general fact of adaptation by chance adjustments 

occurring among excessive diffused movements is, of course, 

true — that I have exemplified above in the theory of the 

rise of handwriting. 1 What is not accounted for on the 

1 Chap, v., § 2. 



1 88 The Theory of Development 

current theory is just the spontaneous or excessive move- 
ments, from which the selection is made. These, in my 
view, are due to the heightened central processes excited by 
vitally appropriate stimuli. This seems so elementary and 
simple that it would not be worth while to speak further of 
it were it not for another fact, to which we may now revert. 

Biologists find among the first adaptations of the organ- 
isms, the earliest in the phylogenetic series — in the minutest 
bacteria, the most formless protozoa, the unicellular crea- 
tures of a day ; in plants, in all life — a certain fundamental 
difference of movements. All organisms behave in two 
great and opposite ways toward stimulations ; they approach 
them, or they recede from them. Creatures which move as 
a whole move toward some kinds of stimulations, and recede 
from others. Creatures which are fixed in their habitat ex- 
pand toward certain stimulations, and contract away from 
others. It is very evident that if this be true, the very uni- 
formity of the relation entitles it to a place in any theory of 
development. And the question at once arises: why is it 
that we find these two well-marked differences in behaviour 
in each organism, whatever its type and place in the scale of 
animate nature ? 1 

Now if we assume this to be a fact in nature — I devote 
an entire chapter further on to the consideration of the 
facts, under the phrase 'Organic Imitation' — that an organ- 
ism tends to approach, move, strain, toward certain stimu- 
lations, and away from others, it becomes easy to connect 
the fact with our former account of development, and to 

1 " Coextensive with the phenomena of excitability — that is to say, with 
the phenomena of life — we find this function of selective discrimination — 
this power of discriminating among stimuli and responding to those which 
are the stimuli to which responses are appropriate." — Romanes, Mental 
Evolution in Animals, p. 51. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 189 

hold that the stimulations which the organism tends toward 
are those which heighten its vitality, which give it pleasure, 
and those from which it draws back are those whose effect 
upon it is the contrary — the damaging, the painful ones. 
This is on the surface the most natural thing in the world 
for nature to do — to endow her creatures with a great 
power of self-preservation and self -improvement. An organ- 
ism does not have to wait for a pleasure to come along, but 
after it has once had it, it can go out after it ; nor to remain 
exposed to a pain, but after once experiencing it, it can retire 
with discretion. 

This follows in such simple order from what we have 
found to be the method of adaptation — in each case by a 
movement whose adjustment consists just in its appropriate- 
ness to secure a good stimulation — that the facts of biology 
which show this first contrast in movements are only what 
we would expect. And they tend in so far also to confirm 
the earlier view as to the method. 

Coming to interpret this new result, therefore, we see that our 
early random, spontaneous movements are not only relatively 
random or spontaneous. The ontogenetic growth of the in- 
dividual at any race stage starts with this fundamental 
adjustment of movements to the stimulations under which 
the phylogenetic development has so far progressed. And it 
is only a statement of the law of phylogenetic development to 
say that this antithesis of outward movements, expansions, 
on one hand, and withdrawing movements, contractions, on 
the other, is due to natural selection working among organ- 
isms ; the first application of natural selection spoken of above 
in the introductory sketch of the theory of development. 1 

1 We have the authority of Mr. Spencer for making the ability to move 
toward or away from an object a sufficient cue to the operation of natural 
selection, i.e. in the development of the bilateral nervous system and the 



190 The Theory of Development 

So when we come to consider phylogeny and ontogeny 
together we find that if by an organism we mean a thing 
merely of contractility or irritability, whose round of move- 
ments is kept up by some kind of nutritive process sup- 
plied by the environment — absorption, chemical action of 
atmospheric oxygen, etc. — and whose existence is threatened 
by dangers of contact and what not, the first thing to do is to 
secure a regular supply to the nutritive processes, and to 
avoid these contacts. But the organism can do nothing but 
move, as a whole or in some of its parts. So then if one of 
such creatures is to be fitter than another to survive, it must 
be the creature which by its movements secures more nutri- 
tive processes and avoids more dangerous contacts. But 
movements toward the source of stimulation keep hold on 
the stimulation, and movements away from contacts break 
the contacts, that is all. Nature selects these organisms; 
how could she do otherwise ? 

This, too, is consonant with all that we know of growth. 
Increased vitality tends to enlargement, range of movement, 
activity; while lessened vitality and organic decay tend to 
the opposite series of effects, i.e. shrinking, contraction of 
range, torpidity. 

systenTof antagonistic muscles (loc. cit., I., § 233). But he entirely fails 
to see that the same thing is done by the minute creatures which swarm 
to red light and away from blue light, although they have no nervous or 
muscular systems at all. Dr. Ward also appeals to natural selection in dis- 
cussing this subject as follows: "At first when only random movements 
ensue, we may fairly suppose both that the chance of at once making a happy 
hit would be small and that the number of chances would also be small. 
Under such circumstances natural selection would have to do almost every- 
thing and subjective selection almost nothing. So far as natural selection 
worked we should have, not the individual subject making a series of tries 
and perfecting itself by practice, but we should have those individuals whose 
stuff and structure happened to vary for the better, surviving, increasing 
and displacing the rest." — Encycl. Brit., Art. ' Psychology,' p. 73. 



Current Biological Theory of Adaptation 191 

We only have to suppose, then, that the nutritive growth 
processes are by natural selection drained off in organic ex- 
pansions, to get the division in movements which represents 
this earliest bifurcate adaptation. Then inside of this group 
of expansive movements — ' spontaneities ' or ' heightened 
discharges ' — it becomes the sphere of ontogenetic growth to 
secure the further refinements of adjustment which the phe- 
nomena of 'excess' — now identified both with pleasurable 
experience in consciousness and with motor discharges giving 
outreaching movements — enables the organism to secure. 

Finally, we found the Spencer-Bain theory to make one 
other presupposition. It requires a relatively constant, un- 
changing environment, in order to give the repetitions of 
stimulation which development requires. The organism is 
supposed to be battered, stormed, by repeated stimulations 
of the same general kinds. In this, the purely biological 
theories of development concur; by which I mean those 
theories which do not call in the pleasure-pain process at 
all, but rely simply upon the repetition of stimulations and 
reactions, and the resulting compounding of processes which 
these repetitions are supposed to give. 

It is now evident that our theory renders the organism 
much less dependent upon such regularity and constancy in 
the environment. Creatures which have, in their own 
method of reaction, a way of reaching after the stimulations 
which they need — a way of retaining contact with the 
source of supply, say of food, or oxygen, or sunlight, or 
heat, or of increasing their forces by actually moving toward 
it, these creatures can, in a measure, find or make for them- 
selves the regularities which the environment may not guar- 
antee. 1 So, also, can they by their natural capacity of 

1 Think, for example, the difference it makes in the possible time required 
for the evolution of sense organs such as the eye, if we allow the organism 



192 The Theory of Development 

withdrawing from what is pain-giving, avoid and escape harm- 
ful things to which they are, perchance, constantly exposed. 
It is possible that the faculty of local movement, locomotion, 
possessed by animals, in contrast with plants, is simply a 
further emphasis of this very useful distinction in reactions. 
This follows, indeed, of necessity, when we come to see 
below, that the system of 'antagonistic' muscles is a product 
of just this original contrast of- reaching and withdrawing 
movements. 

When, further, we come to mental development proper, in 
later chapters of this work, we will see that this is exactly 
the method of that highest of all functions of accommoda- 
tion, adaptation by volition. When we will to escape that 
which is brought upon us by the regular laws of nature, we 
simply adopt means of withdrawal from it by anticipation; 
and, on the other hand, we secure those pleasant and bene- 
ficial experiences which the environment of our lives would 
not, in itself perhaps, have brought us by willing to go out 
and find them. 

It is evident from what has now been said, that the funda- 
mental difference between this theory and that criticised 
above concerns the -first organic adaptation. On our theory, 
the first adaptation is phylo genetic; i.e. it is a variation. 
By the operation of natural selection among organisms, 
those survive which respond by expansion to certain stimu- 
lations of food, oxygen, etc., and by contraction to other 
certain stimulations; this expansion gives, by reason of the 
new stimulations which it brings within range, a heightened 
central process which is the organic basis of the hedonic 
consciousness; and this issues in the varied excess move- 
ments from which the ontogenetic adaptations of the indi- 

a form of reaction which moves it toward the source of the light stimulation. 
Cf. Spencer's doctrine on this point, Psychology, L, §§ 231 f. 



Development and Heredity 193 

vidual organism are selected by association, as fitted in turn 
to perpetuate the stimulations which give pleasure, and so 
again to arouse the excess process, and so on. 

The current Spencer-Bain theory, on the contrary, holds, 
as I understand it, that the first adaptation is ontogenetic; 
i.e. it is due to accidental adjustments occurring among 
diffused or spontaneous movements of single organisms, 
these adjustments giving a heightened central process which 
is the organic basis of the hedonic consciousness, and which 
issues again in excess movements from which again further 
adjustments are selected by chance; these adjustments all 
being made permanent by the association between the idea 
of the movements thus giving pleasure, and the memories of 
the pleasure which they give. 

With these criticisms, the outline of the theory of develop- 
ment stands out clearly enough, I think. We may now go 
on to show briefly that the theory would not be affected by 
the truth or falsity of either of the opposed views of heredity 
now so bitterly opposed to each other in biological circles. 

§ 3. Development and Heredity 

No theory of evolution is complete, in general opinion, 
which does not account for the utilization in some way, 
from one generation to another, of the gains of the earlier 
generations, turning individual gains into race gains. I 
wish, therefore, to inquire briefly what treatment the view of 
development held above has a right to expect from the two 
current theories of heredity. 

The neo- Darwinians hold that natural selection, operating 
upon congenital variations, is adequate to explain all progres- 
sive race gains. This theory, therefore, is able to dispense 
with the ontogenetic acquirements of the particular organism. 



194 The Theory of Development 

It accordingly denies that what an individual experiences 
in his lifetime, the gains he makes in his adaptations to his 
surroundings, can be transmitted to his sons. 

This theory, it is evident, can be held on the view of 
development sketched above. For, granting the ontogenetic 
progress required by the Spencer-Bain theory and adopted 
in my own, — the learning of new movements in the way 
which I have called 'functional -selection,' — yet the ability 
to do it may be a congenital variation. Indeed, I have made 
the excess process itself, which gives the movements from 
which 'functional selection' selects the fittest, together with 
the great antithesis of expansions and contractions with pleas- 
ure and pain, just such variations seized upon by natural 
selection. And all the later acquirements of individual organ- 
isms may likewise be considered only the evidence of ad- 
ditional variations from these earlier variations. So it is only 
necessary to hold to a view by which variations are cumu- 
lative to secure the same results by natural selection as would 
have been secured by the inheritance of acquired characters 
from father to son. Mr. Spencer and others seem to me to be 
quite wide of the mark in saying that the only alternative 
to the inheritance of acquired characters is a doctrine of 
'special creation.' The life history of the mammal embryo 
shows us, as a matter of fact, as we have already seen, a 
single creature going through many of the variations of 
the race series, without giving us the actual life history of 
the beings which in their lives represented any single one 
of these stages. As Balfour says: 1 "Each organism re- 
produces the variations inherited from all its ancestors, at 
successive stages in its individual ontogeny which corre- 
spond with those at which the variations appeared in its 
ancestors." The embryological record emphasizes the vari- 

1 Comparative Embryology, p. 3. 



Development and Heredity 195 

ations, not the means by which they were produced, nor 
their detailed organic outcome in particular generations. 1 

The problem which is left on the hands of the neo- Dar- 
winian, therefore, is to construct a theory of variations. 
The 'why,' the 'how much,' the 'in what direction,' of vari- 
ation — these questions he must answer. And, of course, 
the burden of proof lies on him to show that his adversa- 
ries have not correctly answered the question of 'the how' 
of variation by their hypothesis of the transmission of ac- 
quired characters. 

It is not as generally seen, however, that the only way 
that such a theorist can answer these questions is by an actual 
examination of existing variations both as to the facts of their 
existence and of their modes of development. He must rec- 
ognize all the processes of the development of the individual 
in order to define the variation which rendered these results 
possible in the life of the individual. This is what gives value 
to the Spencer-Bain theory, considered as an attempt to define 
the actual ontogenetic process of accommodation. On the 
basis of that theory we may ask the question, therefore, How 
can functional selection — individual growth in accommo- 
dation — be efficient ? What is the neurological process seen 
in it and what kind of congenital variations does the presence 
of this process presuppose and also by screening and supple- 
menting — as ' Organic Selection ' supposes — serve to ac- 
cumulate ? 

The theory of individual accommodation, accordingly, 
comes first as a matter both of fact and of interpretation, and 
should be treated quite apart from the problem of hered- 
ity. We are justified accordingly, from the point of view 

1 And this emphasis is made more emphatic, possibly, in the light of the 
'discontinuous variations' recently discussed by Bateson and De Vries, and 
earlier pointed out by Darwin, and by Galton under the name of 'sports.' 



196 The Theory of Development 

of the neo- Darwinian theory, in attempting to answer it 
in the preceding pages. 1 

The same is true also from the point of view of the neo- 
Lamarckian theory of heredity, as is evident ; for just such 
examination and interpretation of the facts of individual 
experience and development supplies on this theory the very 
means and method of interpreting hereditary race progress. 
Granting the inheritance of acquired characters, of course 
the biologist then asks: Well, what has the individual at 
each stage been able to acquire, and how did he acquire it ? 
This is what we have been attempting to answer above. 

It is being gradually recognized by biologists that the 
requirements of theory are equally well served by either 
theory, which means that facts alone can refute either 
theory. Whatever a particular creature may be endowed 
with, he might have got in either way — or in both together. 
Instinct, for example, may be held to have a twofold origin ; 
it may have arisen in some cases by the natural selection of 
creatures having accidental reflex adaptations, and in other 
cases by intelligent adaptation. And both processes can be 
construed without supposing the inheritance of acquired 
characters ; for the ability to make intelligent adaptation may 
be considered as itself a variation, by which congenital 
adaptations have been fostered. 

I should say, therefore, that, supposing the analogue of 
the pleasure-pain process is in all cases the actual evidence 
and accompaniment of the excess process from whose dis- 
charges adjustments of movement are secured, then either of 
two further views may be held. Either on one hand the 
pleasure-pain process is a variation (and with it, the actual 
hedonic consciousness), the environment of the individual in 

1 The further carrying out of this form of Darwinism is to be found in the 
volume Development and Evolution. 



The Origin of Consciousness 197 

each generation simply serving to give it scope for special 
accommodation ; or on the other hand, this process itself is a 
functional selection, a thing acquired by the individual in his 
experience. But in either case, the pleasure-pain process 
is the same and performs the same functions; both are exactly 
what the facts show them to be. From the organic side and 
without reference to consciousness, it is what the biologists 
call 'plasticity.' 

In the foregoing pages I have seemed, however, to find 
reason for saying that the pleasure-pain process, with its 
antithesis of outward and inward movements, was due to 
natural selection, that is, that it was phylogenetic in its 
origin. Further considerations may now be adduced quite 
apart from the general question of heredity. We are in 
fact brought here face to face with the question of the 
origin of consciousness, and upon this one is able to express 
only very hypothetical opinions. 

§ 4. The Origin of Consciousness i 

The foregoing paragraphs seem to give us some indica- 
tions of the relation of consciousness to the phenomena 
of life. We have found it necessary to hold that the physical 
basis of hedonic consciousness — the fact of heightened 
central vital processes issuing in expansive movements — 
is a variation of phylogenetic origin in primitive organisms, 
rather than an acquisition due to adjustment secured in the 
life-history of particular organisms. The original bifurcation 
of movements, as outreaching and retiring, I have described 
as a phylogenetic distinction and product ; a variation among 
the earliest contractile forms. Some arose by variation 

1 In the French and German editions sections are inserted here on ' Organic 
Selection' and 'Determinate Evolution,' topics now fully treated in Develop- 
ment and Evolution. 



198 The Theory of Development 

which did discharge their increased vitality in expansive 
movements, and by the advantage of it lived longer and prop- 
agated more. 

It is possible, however, to hold a different view; in fact, 
we have found the ordinary Spencer-Bain theory of adaptation 
doing so. On this view the heightened central process is 
an adaptation secured in the lifetime of the creature. On 
this view, further, it is necessary. to suppose that all stimu- 
lations, including those of nutrition, varied in their effects 
upon the organism from enlargement, expansion, etc., in 
some instances, to diminution, contraction, etc., in other 
instances, in the same organism. Mr. Spencer does indeed 
attempt to give a purely mechanical deduction of the as- 
sociation between withdrawing movement and pain, 1 making 
it arise in the 'experience' of uniform contractile tissue. In 
that case, ontogenetic adaptation precedes phylogenetic, and 
if we bring in consciousness at all, we should have in such a 
creature an association between the pleasure of the success of 
certain expansive movements which were also adaptive, and 
the sense of the movements themselves. 

This, it is evident, makes consciousness of pleasure and 
pain arise at some point in the creature's life; just where, 
we have no clear answer from Spencer. But if we say 
that uniform contractile tissue did not have consciousness 
before the heightened process which indicates pleasure, 
and that this heightened process is due in some way to 
accidental adjustments of movement; then consciousness 
must have arisen by means of these adjustments. 

But we have seen that adjustments of movement can 
have no meaning for the organism, except as they bring 
certain vital stimulations. So the rise of consciousness 
after all would seem to be due to the influence of these vital 

1 Spencer, loc. cit., I., § 227. 



The Origin of Consciousness 199 

stimulations. And when we come to ask why these vital 
stimulations are vital, why they are necessary, that is, we 
appeal at once to the habits, — the very constitution of the life 
process itself, — all of which must have come to the particu- 
lar organism by heredity. So consciousness becomes, after 
all, in its actual rise a phylogenetic product. 

Looking at it from this phylogenetic point of view, as 
a variation, we find difficulties and certain advantages. 
Romanes, it will be remembered, treats the fact of 'selec- 
tive contraction' as the 'criterion of mind,' the indication of 
the presence of consciousness ; 1 and, inasmuch as he also 
finds this fact of selective contraction in the lowest known 
living creatures, it would seem in his view to be due either to 
selection, in case we suppose still earlier a uniform contractile 
tissue, or as a part of the 'general mystery of life,' in case we 
do not. 

The difficulty, however, which he sees to the ' selection ' 
view, he states in this way: "The difficulty is that I began 
by showing it necessary to define mind as the power of ex- 
ercising Choice [selective reaction], and then proceeded to 
define the latter as a power belonging only to agents that are 
able to feel. ... It seems that my conception of what con- 
stitutes Choice is in antagonism with my view that the 
essential element of Choice is found to occur among organ- 
isms which cannot properly be supposed to feel. This . . . 
contradiction is a real one, though I hold it to be unavoidable. 
For it arises from the fact that neither Feeling nor Choice 
appears upon the scene of life suddenly. . . . There are 
two ways of meeting the difficulty. One is to draw an ar- 
bitrary line, and the other is not to draw any line at all, 
but to carry the terms down through the whole gradation of 
the things until we arrive at the terminal or root principles. 

1 Mental Evpli+Hon in Animals, Chap. I. 



200 The Theory of Development 

By the time that we do arrive at these root principles, it is 
no doubt true that our terms have lost all their original 
meaning.' ' 

The difficulty is, in short, that we have two horns of a 
dilemma : either (i) Consciousness with feeling of pleasure 
and pain are coextensive with life ; in which case they existed 
before the selective reactions which are said to be the criterion 
of consciousness. For — to put this alternative in terms of 
my own foregoing explanations — the same stimulations 
of nutrition, etc., which are now said to explain the increase 
of the central processes, upon which consciousness is based, 
must have been vital to life before this so-called variation 
arose. Why then did not the uniform living protoplasm, 
which preceded the variation, itself have consciousness? 
Or, the second horn of the dilemma, (2) Consciousness with 
feeling of pleasure and pain are quite useless appendages to 
the theory of adaptation and are in no way accounted for; 
since the variation which secures the first adaptation, that is, 
the selective reactions said to be the criterion of mind, are 
simply variations in processes of nutrition, etc., which must 
haye existed in earlier living matter, if it existed, and may 
exist in much higher forms of living matter, in which we 
have no evidence of such a thing as feeling of pleasure or 
pain. 

Romanes thinks it is best to draw no line at all between 
life without and life with consciousness, but to say that, as 
we descend in the scale, terms like feeling, which imply con- 
sciousness, are gradually eviscerated of their meaning; and 
he is probably right. But he does not see that even then there 
are two remaining alternatives. We may say, to state one of 
the alternatives first, that life existed before selective reaction ; 
in which case — holding that mind is coextensive with life 
— he must give up his criterion of mind. This, I think, he 



The Origin of Consciousness 201 

does substantially, adopting, somewhat hesitatingly it is true, 
the Spencer-Bain view of the origin of adaptations by acci- 
dental movements during the lifetime of early creatures. He 
says, 1 "How are we to explain the fact that the anatomical 
plan of a nerve centre . . . comes to be that which is needed 
to direct the nervous stimuli into the channels required? 
The answer to this question we found to consist in the prop- 
erty which is shown by nervous tissue, to grow by use into the 
directions which are required for further use. This subject 
is as yet an obscure one, especially when the earliest stages 0} 
such adaptive growth are concerned, but in a general way we 
can understand that hereditary usage, combined with natural 
selection, may have been alone sufficient, etc." (italics mine). 
Furthermore, he presents an argument for the ontogenetic 
view of the rise of selective reactions in saying, 2 "It is im- 
possible that heredity can have provided in advance for 
innovations upon or alterations of its own machinery during 
the lifetime of a particular individual." The inference being 
that if such innovations cannot be provided for by heredity 
(variation), they must be acquired during the lifetime of the 
creatures. This argument is worthy of discussion and is 
taken up again : but it is not necessary to dwell upon it here, 
inasmuch as it does not conflict with the possible truth of the 
second alternative, which is still open. 

This second alternative — really a third one in relation to 
the horns of the original dilemma presented to the mind of 
Romanes — is this : we may say that life began with selective 
reaction as part of its original endowment, and with con- 
sciousness withal, that is, with feelings of pleasure and pain. 

This position preserves the criterion of mind, making it also 
the criterion of life, and so assumes a common phylogenetic 

1 Loc. cit., p. 60. 

2 Loc. cit., pp. 20 f., quoting from his own work on Animal Intelligence. 



202 The Theory of Development 

beginning of both life and mind in one. This seems to me 
to be required not only by the logic of criteria but also by the 
facts of life. 1 

In what sense we are able to call this a ' variation' is, of 
course, open to dispute. It is certainly a variation in nature 
— this tremendous thing, life, made more tremendous as being 
the vehicle of mind. But is it not more simple than the other 
horn of the dilemma; hat which requires the assumption, 
first, of life without consciousness, and then, a little later on, 
the further assumption of consciousness in connection with 
life? 

But more positive advantages come, it is to be hoped, from 
the foregoing considerations. It has been showi that the 
theory of biological adaptation cannot dispense with a factor 
which is, from all accounts, — taking biologists like Romanes 
to witness, — the physiological analogue of pleasure and 
pain, and that nowhere can a beginning be found for this 
in the life series. When we come further to see that all 
stages of mental accommodation and development can be 
construed by the same principles of adaptation — a task to 
which this book is mainly devoted — it would require some 
temerity of dogmatism or some strong evidence to the con- 
trary to lead one to throw away such an extension of the 
principle of uniformity in nature. And yet, with the two 
great exceptions, Spencer and Romanes, I know of no biol- 
ogists approaching the first rank, who have attempted to 
bring the phenomena of mental development — the class of 
facts most open to scrutiny and most important everywhere 
in the animal series — and those of organic adaptation, under 
the terms of a single concept. 2 

1 This view is the 'growing' one among biologists {e.g. Minot, LI. Morgan, 
etc.). It had early statement by Lewes. 

2 This statement is happily no longer true. 



Outcome : Habit and Accommodation 203 



§ 5. Outcome: Habit and Accommodation 

Returning upon our path we are now able to see that two 
great truths stand out in all development; two truths both 
of which are based upon the general fact of contractility or 
reaction, and which, therefore, take us farther upon our way. 

The organism tends to repeat what it has already done; 
this all theories of development agree upon, the biologists, 
the disciples of Spencer, the advocates of the association 
theory of Bain, the psychologists. The fact of repetition is 
admitted to be the corner-stone of all theories; and all 
theories go farther in naming the principle which such repe- 
titions illustrate, the law of Habit. 

The formulation of the principle of habit, however, must 
depend somewhat upon the sort of notion we entertain of 
contractility, of the way which the organism takes to get its 
repetitions. If we hold that habits are distinctly due to the 
repetition of motor discharges, — that is, to the second, third, 
fourth performance of contractions, as the Spencer-Bain 
theory tells us, — then no habit can be formed as such, or 
can be begun to be formed until after a first contraction has 
opened the way for the passage of the contracting energy into 
the same channels of discharge a second, third, fourth time. 
The formulation of the principle of habit on this theory takes 
on, then, something of this form — its usual form — i.e. 
Habit expresses the tendency of an organism to repeat its own 
movements again and again. 

Enough has been said, I think, already to show what criti- 
cism ought to be passed on this formulation. It means that 
the organism starts with nothing equivalent to habit, with no 
native tendency to any kind of movement, with no teleology in 
its movements, no ulterior organic ends. It further gives no 



204 The Theory of Development 

criterion as to what kind of movements it is desirable the or- 
ganism should get into the habit of performing. It makes 
the movements necessary to the creature's life on a par pre- 
cisely with all other movements, while yet admitting that it is 
only by appropriate movements that the organism could have 
got life processes at all. It gives the organism no preferences 
for its food, its oxygen, the stimulations in the presence of 
which alone life itself would be possible ; for such preferences 
would have to show themselves as organic tendencies to some 
kind of differential movements. 

Coming to supply this lack, as we have endeavoured to do 
in the preceding pages, we find it necessary to consider that 
the repetition of movement is not at all what the organism 
is after, nor indeed is it what the principle of habit rests upon. 
It is not true that all movements are ' equal before law ' — 
the law of habit. Movements which cause pain do not tend 
to be repeated. They are exceptions to the law of habit, as 
that is usually formulated. Painful movements are in- 
hibited, they tend to be reversed, squelched, utterly blotted 
out ; how can this be explained on the foregoing formula for 
habit? It cannot be explained. And yet it is found to be a 
fact in the lowest living creatures that the biologist knows. 

So just as in starting with life we have to start with some pro- 
cess characteristic of life, — say nutrition alone, if you please, 
— so we have also by the law of dynamogenesis to start with 
tendencies to movements which are the manifestations of 
life, and are, in so far, special. And the object of these 
movements is the maintenance of life : which is only another 
expression, as we have found reason to believe, for the main- 
tenance of the stimulations necessary to life. So we reach 
another formulation of the principle of habit which reads 
something like this : Habit expresses the tendency of an or- 
ganism to keep in touch, by means of movement, with bene- 



Outcome: Habit and Accommodation 205 

ficial stimulations ; or if we summarize under a single word 
the character of the movements toward which all habits of 
the organism tend, we may say, Habit expresses the tendency 
of the organism to secure and to retain its vital stimulations. 

On' this view, a habit begins before the movement which 
illustrates it actually takes place ; the organism is endowed 
with a habit, if that be not considered a contradiction. Its 
life process involves just the tendency which habit goes on 
to confirm and to extend. The process of habit, having as 
its end the maintenance of a condition of stimulation, is set 
in train by the initial stimulus. And the discharge of it in 
the path which again 'hits' the stimulus is the function of 
this stimulus rather than another, and reflects, exactly and 
alone, the fact that then and there is a stimulus whose in- 
fluence upon the vital processes is good. 

Here at the very origin of the things of life, therefore, we 
find the 'circular process,' what I am going on to describe as 
the physical basis of 'imitation.' And the law of habit is 
simply a generalization, all the way through the facts of biol- 
ogy and psychology, from the various applications of this 
principle. 

The other great principle, on which the foregoing discus- 
sions serve to throw some light, is that of Accommodation, 
as it is best to call it in psychology as well as biology. 
Let us see how it may be put in contrast to that which 
is called habit. 

We have had occasion to ask in detail how an organism 
can accommodate itself, and have already discussed various 
answers in equal detail. Our outcome may be briefly stated, 
apart from the consideration of habit, somewhat in this way : 
An organism accommodates itself, or learns new adjustments, 
simply by exercising the movements which it already has, its 
habits, in a heightened or excessive way; the accommodation 



206 The Theory of Development 

is in each case simply the result and fruit of the habit itself 
which is exercised. 

This is clear when we remember that on our new concep- 
tion of habit every act prompted by habit is an act of at- 
taining a beneficial stimulation or experience; now the 
result of every attainment of a beneficial experience is to dis- 
charge an excessive pleasure wave of movement from which 
new adjustments are selected by the same criterion ; that is, 
by the enriched stimulations or experiences which they in 
turn secure. So these later adjustments are accommodations. 
Each such accommodation is reached simply in the ordinary 
routine of habit, and is its outcome. 

How simple this view is in the whole range of facts becomes 
evident in the notice of various of its applications in subse- 
quent chapters. It seems to allow us to see nature moving 
smoothly, instead of being compelled, as we are so often 
compelled, to consider a new thing, a novelty in nature, an 
invention, a new adaptation of means to end — to consider 
each of these as involving a great wrench of nature from the 
methods of her usual working ! Let us say, once for all, that 
each new action is an accommodation, and every accommo- 
dation arises right out of the bosom of old processes and is 
filled with old matter. Does not the one kind of 'circular' 
reaction in which, as we now see, habit and accommodation 
meet on common ground, enable us to see how this may be 
true? 

Finally, coming once again to the topic of heredity, let us 
restate the objection made by Romanes to the view that life 
may begin with differential reactions, or that such differen- 
tial reactions could not be variations preserved by natural 
selection. He says, in a passage already quoted in part : * 
"Does the organism learn to make new adjustments, or to 

1 Loc. cit. y pp. 20 f. 



Outcome: Habit and Accommodation 207 

modify old ones, in accordance with the results of its own in- 
dividual experience? If it does so, the fact cannot be due 
simply to reflex action in the sense above described [i.e. 
repetitions of old reactions under the law of habit ] ; for it is 
impossible that heredity can have provided in advance for 
innovations upon or alterations in its own machinery during 
the lifetime of a particular individual." 

This difficulty, as we saw, led Romanes to throw over his 
own criterion of mind, and to hold that all adaptations, in- 
cluding those selective reactions which he had made charac- 
teristic of mind, were reached in the lifetime of individuals. 
Further, this position, if true, would lead inevitably to a 
Lamarckian theory of heredity, which indeed Romanes held ; 
for if no hereditary variation can provide for future adapta- 
tions, then no past adaptations can have been provided for 
by variations to which they were future, and so all actual 
adaptations must have arisen by use, heredity being solely the 
bridge of transmission from father to son. 

But we are now able to see, from the results we have 
reached, not only that there is another alternative, but also 
that this statement of Romanes is not correct. The other 
alternative is that life began with a habit, the very method of 
which does include a process which provides for the continual 
modification of its own results. 

If we accept this alternative, then I have shown how new 
adaptations can be secured inside of this habit. But if we 
do not accept it, preferring to believe with Spencer in a form 
of earlier life which showed quite formless and diffused con- 
tractions, we are able still to see how such a pseudo-habit 
may have come about as a variation. The only necessary 
feature of this variation would be that nutrition increase ex- 
pansive and varied movements ; that is all. The result would 
be that the stimulations affording nutrition would be hit upon 



208 The Theory of Development 

and gained of tener by these organisms than by others, and so 
a habit of getting greater variety and richness of such stimula- 
tions in this way would be secured, and new accommodations 
made which would break up the habits transmitted by 
heredity. Would not this be just the state of things which 
Romanes declares impossible ? — heredity providing for the 
modification of its own machinery ? Heredity not only leaves 
the future free for modifications, -it also provides a method of 
life in the operation of which modifications are bound to 
come, and further — and this is the most interesting fact in 
the whole case — it provides that these modifications shall 
take place inside the great twofold accommodation of move- 
ments corresponding to pleasure and pain, thus making the 
very fact of accommodation itself the great deep-seated habit 
of organic life. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Origin of Motor 1 Attitudes and Expressions 

§ i. General View 

In ordinary usage, the word 'expression' stands for a 
passably definite thing. We mean, when we use it, to say 
that the signs, which we see in face, attitude, deportment, etc., 
of a man or beast, mean something; and that this meaning 
is what the mental process or state of the individual or 
creature under observation really is, or what he really intends 
to have us take his state to be. He expresses something to 
me when I gather from certain signs about his body, such as 
those I have mentioned, certain facts to be true about his 
mind or consciousness. The phrases, ' facial expression,' 
' verbal and rhetorical expression,' 'emotional expression,' 
etc., all have this common idea at bottom. 

Just as soon as we have come to ask how expression is pos- 
sible, how it comes that these external signs can be trusted to 
convey the truth about the mind which lies within, we see 
that a whole philosophy of development is required to give 
us an answer; a philosophy of the development, that is, of 
mind and body together. It will not do to give an explana- 
tion simply of one mental state, like grief, expressing itself 
in one group of signs, like weeping ; that might be solved by 
saying that the body had been created for just this use by the 
mind. But when we come to see that all possible mental states 

1 The word 'motor' is used to include the effects of 'efferent' process 
generally, not those of muscle contraction alone, 
p 209 



210 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

have their appropriate signs, all in a system, and that each 
animal consciousness has a system of signs, and all the same 
system, then we have to account not merely for the single 
cases, but for the system, as a system. And this is a very 
different matter. 

Let us take, for example, the facts of suggestion as they 
have been set forth above. Suggestion we found to involve 
a gradual series of changes, transitions, stages, in the action, 
behaviour, attitudes of the child, according as he experiences 
changes, transitions, stages of treatment and stimulation 
from his surroundings. All his signs or expressions are very 
gradually formed out of previous signs. And no one of them 
can be understood except when considered in relation to 
those which went before. They all, in short, constitute a 
developing system and represent the mind also, as it is also 
considered as a developing system. 

And, again, if we did not know beforehand how a par- 
ticular experience would manifest itself in the system of signs, 
the signs simply as such would have no meaning whatever to 
us ; they would not be signs of anything. Suppose I observe 
the movements of a complicated machine, going on in a series, 
— a machine which I do not understand. Its movements 
are not signs or expressions to me of anything. They really 
are signs, however, expressions of the plan of action of the 
machine, stages in the idea or state of consciousness of the 
designer, which the machine embodies. And as soon as I 
understand the machine, which means as soon as I have the 
same state of consciousness or idea that he had, then the 
movements in their series or system do become signs, real 
expressions to me. I must be, then, actually introduced into 
the same system as the idea and the machine, in order to find 
what the expressions mean. 

Looking at the child's expressions again, we see that they 



The Theory of ' Emotional Expression ' 211 

are expressions to us only because we are in the same sys- 
tem — the human, the life system — with the child. I have 
gone through the same systematic evolution of signs that 
he is going through. So the question of the origin of 
expression again widens itself out magnificently. It stands 
for an answer thus : not only why do the child's expressions — 
mind and body together — develop on such a system, but 
also why do all of us who understand the signs — man, 
child, beast — find ourselves in the same system of signs in- 
telligible and usable by us all. How can we account for a 
great organic mind system in the world, and with it how ac- 
count for its organic embodiment in the system of signs which 
we call expression? 

This, it is evident, makes expression a function of organic 
evolution, and really identifies the science of expression with 
the great branch of biological science called Morphology. 
For signs of functions are always shapes of organs, temporary 
or permanent, and a system of shapes is always a system of 
permanent signs. 

We must accordingly appeal to the theory of development 
to explain all expressions whatever. 

§ 2. The Theory of 'Emotional Expression 7 

Recent discussion has brought out certain great facts about 
the psycho-physics of emotion. 

The outcome of discussion takes form about two or three 
general principles which I am now aiming to state in their 
general bearing upon the origin of 'expression' generally. 
It is evident that the word 'emotion ' may be used in two very 
distinct senses. Emotion may mean a phenomenon of 
instinct purely, the 'emotions' which a baby a year old has 
already got, such as fear, anger, jealousy, sympathy, etc.; 



212 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

or ' emotion ' may designate a phenomenon of ideas — some- 
thing that the baby has yet to get, such as the emotions, or 
sentiments, which involve thought about things, contempla- 
tion, the more or less adequate understanding of the mean- 
ings of things in relation to the person who is affected. A 
child, for example, starts at a loud noise, and shows all the 
signs of the emotion of fear ; but the adult fears a loud noise 
only when he has some reason to think that it means danger 
to him. 

If this distinction be true, — and no one denies the dis- 
tinction in fact, apart from the terms which have often hope- 
lessly obscured it, — it becomes evident that the question as 
to what the components of emotional 'expression' are, is 
really a genetic question. All the elements of the problem 
of the genesis of ' expressions ' generally — that is, of the 
laws of motor development — must be recognized and woven 
into an adequate theory. 

And when we come to do this, two very important facts 
come before us, of which it is our duty to give some account. 
We have first to ask why each so-called emotion has the 
particular channels of 'expression,' or motor discharges, 
which it has ; and second, how it comes that the same system 
of discharges or expressions answer for the two kinds of 
emotion which we have distinguished as, in one case, a 
phenomenon of instinct and, in the other case, a phenomenon 
of ideas. How is it that what I fear because I have some 
reasonable ground for fearing it, the child also fears by 
instinct, and that I make the same contractions, etc., in 
my state of fear that he does in his? 

The first of these questions may be called the 'psycho- 
physical' question of emotion. It asks how the mental state 
which we psychologists call emotion is actually related, in 
any particular case, to the movements, contractions, vaso- 



The Theory of ' Emotional Expression ' 213 

motor changes, etc., which the body shows when it is ' ex- 
pressing' this emotion. Does the mental state, the true 
emotion, come first, and itself cause the bodily expression, 
as we ordinarily seem to think? Or is the emotion itself 
the consciousness that these violent bodily changes are 
already taking place? This is the problem which men are 
now discussing, and it is this which I wish to take up in the 
light of the principles of development which have been 
already laid out in the earlier pages. And we can ask our- 
selves the question in somewhat the following form, namely : 
How could what we know as emotion, together with what we 
know as emotional expression, have arisen in the course of 
development, and what does development teach us of the 
relation of these two things to each other ? 

When, then, we come to take a broad survey of motor 
development, in the race no less than in the child, we are 
able to signalize certain great principles which we cannot 
do without: principles which stand out in biology and in 
psychology as essential to any theory of development. The 
whole range of facts fairly available for the genetic theory 
of emotion reactions should be brought under our three 
principles: Habit, used broadly to include the effects of 
inherited endowment, as illustrated by instinct, as well as 
acquired functions; Accommodation, the law of adaptation 
in all progressive evolution, no matter how adaptation is 
secured ; and, earliest and most fundamental, Dynamo genesis, 
expressing the fact simply of regular connection between the 
sensory and motor sides of all living reactions, as to amount 
of process. These principles have already been given some 
notice. Let us see, therefore, how, if we assume that these 
three principles are all the ' rules of procedure' which the 
organism has to work under, — how, then, emotion and its 
expression can have come to be. 



214 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

I. As for the fact of Dynamogenesis : what bearing has 
this principle upon the theory of emotion? Much every 
way. We must bear in mind that this principle has always 
been acting, and always is acting, in every reaction we 
make ; that our reactions have grown to be what they are in 
all cases by direct reflection of what we have received or ex- 
perienced ; that just as certain as it is that we are experienc- 
ing new things every instant of our lives, just so certain is it 
that we are expressing these new experiences in every action 
that we make. Every one is familiar with Professor James's 
view that our minds never have just the same contents twice 
over. Of course they do not. But the correlative fact has 
not had the same recognition. If we never experience the 
same twice, so we never act the same twice. The new x of 
content, added to the old c of content, must call out a new x 
of action, added to the old a of action. If then our reaction 
is always a -f- x, just as the content which it follows upon is 
c + x, then no reaction is ever that and that only which is 
guaranteed by habit, inheritance, and what not, in the past. 

For it is easy to see that in every action of every organism 
at every stage of development there are two elements of dis- 
charge : an element due to habit solely, the discharges which 
are let loose by the old quantity of content into the path- 
ways fixed by association, and then, second, an element of 
new discharge due to the new quantity of content. 

With this distinction in mind, we come to ask whether 
emotion is present in this state of things. Suppose we are 
taking a particular instance of fear when we know that it is 
present, and then ask what factor in this whole state of central 
process the emotion really corresponds to. We find several 
possible answers. 

The emotion may be said, in the terms of one possible 
answer, to be due to the presence of the new elements of 



The Theory of ' Emotional Expression ' 215 

content; to the commotion made by new presentations, 
images, play of thoughts, etc.; and the expression to be 
due to the passing off of this commotion to the muscles. 
The reply to this view seems easy when we remember that 
with the instinctive emotions, our case of the child's fear, it 
is a very old familiar thing, not a new thing at all, which 
excites the emotion; yet granted this, we still may say that 
the discharge due to the new elements of content in other 
cases of emotion, not so clearly instinctive, must, on our 
view of excess discharge, give some feeling of either pleasure 
or pain, and it is possible that the pleasure or pain tone of 
all but the instinctive emotions arises in this way. It may be 
an element in consciousness brought about by new accommo- 
dation conditions. 

Yet this again may be disputed. One may admit the new 
element of discharge due to dynamogenesis, but then add a 
pertinent view. We may distinguish content + its expression, 
from content 4- feeling of its expression ; saying that there 
is no consciousness or feeling of the new element of motor 
process until it is itself reported as a new element of sensory 
content. Quite possible ; it may be so, if the nervous sys- 
tem has developed that way. But we are convinced that it 
has not developed that way. We have found it necessary 
to hold that the pleasure represents the heightened organic 
process from which the excess discharge which issues in 
dynamogeny is itself released. Of course, as has been said 
above, the effect of the discharge in movement is reported 
back in a new element of pleasure or pain, but that is only 
claiming for it in turn an influence upon the vital processes 
whose condition is the sole direct ground of pleasure-pain 
consciousness. 

So we may safely say as the result of the action of dy- 
namogenesis that there is in all emotion — as in every state 



216 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

of consciousness in which there are new elements of content 
— a tingeing of pleasure or pain due to the presence of these 
new elements of content; and that there are in all actions, 
under the same conditions, new elements of discharge which 
give part of the movements involved in the so-called expres- 
sion of that state of consciousness. 

II. With this result well in mind, let us inquire more fully 
into the influence of the second of our principles, Habit. 

It is now evident that a motor reaction of any kind has 
always two stimulating antecedents : one the influence fixed 
by habit, and the other the influence of the new elements of 
content presented by the environment. But we know that 
habit tends to make reactions automatic and reflex; and 
that consciousness tends to evaporate from such reactions. 
As I put it long ago, " psychologically, it [Habit] means loss 
of oversight, diffusion of attention, subsiding consciousness." 1 
Hence we must admit that those actions most dominated by 
habit — the smoothest and most instinctive — have least con- 
sciousness in their carrying out. And, on the other hand, 
where habit is least influential, where the content is largely 
new, where the pleasure or pain of its assimilation is great, 
there attention and effort are strained, there excitement runs 
high. In all these cases the stimulating influence is new, 
one which has not yet been brought under the influence of 
habit, and so one which adds a new dynamogenic quality to 
the reaction. 

It turns out, however, that just those l expressive ' reac- 
tions which are most instinctive and reflex (fear, anger, joy, 
etc.) really do carry with them most of the consciousness 
which we call emotion — certainly vivid and disturbed 
enough. What then shall we say? Either that there are 
really present other new elements of content additional to the 

1 Feeling and Will, p. 49. 



The Theory of ' Emotional Expression ' 217 

regular antecedents of the reflex ; or that the emotion is not 
the antecedent of the expression at all, but that the reverse 
is true — the emotion is consequent upon the expression. 
We cannot hold to the former alternative. Where are the 
adequate stimulants in conscious content, new or old, to the 
newly hatched chick's wild fear of the hawk? 1 So we must 
take the other alternative, and hand over all this class of re- 
actions to the theory which holds that the emotion, so far as it 
has fixed instinctive forms of expression, follows upon the 
expression. I have no hesitation, therefore, in adopting the 
' effect ' theory of emotion recently announced by Lange and 
James as regards inherited emotional expression excited by 
constant definite objects of presentation. 

Emotion is, on this view, therefore, no exception to our 
law of ontogenetic growth: the law that that which is ha- 
bitual is carried out with least consciousness. The high 
consciousness in emotion is a reflex effect. But we would 
expect, on the other hand, that in all the ideal states of 
mind, in all the new complications of content to which the 
attention has to get adjusted, in all emotional states which 
do not attach immediately and unreflectively to conscious 
objects of presentation, — that in all these cases the exciting 
influence should have the dynamogenic effect already noted, 
and so give elements of expression over and above the re- 
actions due to habit. 

Reverting, now, to our fancied situation, a state of emotion 
in actual operation, we find that we have made certain simpli- 
fications. The pleasure or pain of it is, at least in part, due 
to the presence of new elements in the object which causes 
the emotion ; the expression of it is due, at least in part, to 
the new discharges let loose by the central process corre- 

1 This illustration may still serve, although Professor LI. Morgan finds 
no such congenital fear-reaction in the chick. 



218 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

sponding to this pleasure or pain; the expression is further 
due, certainly in part, to old reactions or habits of movement 
which have become common in the presence of this object or 
others of its class ; and the quality of the emotion, the char- 
acter it has as making it different from other emotions, is 
due, certainly in part, to the feeling of these factors of the 
expression actually taking place. So far, then, we have 
accounted for something of the pleasure or pain of an emotion, 
something of its expression, and something of its peculiar 
quality or character. Can we do more? Let us see what 
we can get out of our third principle, i Accommodation.' 

III. The law of Accommodation has appeared to us to 
be operative in two ways: first, as expressing the mode of 
each new adaptation under the action of dynamogenesis, — 
the organism adapts itself by the selection, from excess dis- 
charges, of movements fittest to aid vitality, — this is one 
aspect of accommodation ; and it also secures by the action 
of association, the repetition and permanent fixing of the 
fittest movements in great habits which are the regular utility 
reactions, reflexes, instincts, fixed expressions, etc., of the 
organism, — this is the other aspect of accommodation. 
Now, the bearing of the second of these aspects of accom- 
modation on the theory of emotion gives us great expectations 
at once, for it enables us to bring into its complex conditions 
all of the organic and mental elements which are regularly 
associated with those factors already pointed out. Let us 
look a little at details. 

We found that a new object served to bring new vitality 
conditions, new pleasure or pain, new movements by dyna- 
mogenesis. But these new elements only get fixed for re- 
currence as they fit into old adjustments, causing differen- 
tiations of them. This means that the new gets associated 
with the old ; so that when it comes again, all the old which 



The Theory of ' ' Emotional Expression^ 219 

its presence touched on the former occasion now clusters to 
the front in company with it. I tremble and fly at the sight 
of a lion, because he reminds me of a lion's power and dis- 
position; and my attitudes in the presence of such formi- 
dable creatures are those of trembling and flight. So, in brief, 
we have a great mass of associated elements, both of content 
and of movement, rushing into consciousness in consequence 
of every new adjustment, and in addition to its present 
intrinsic motor and emotional value. This gives more quality 
and more pleasure or pain to the state of emotion. 

This principle applies directly, also, to all the organic, 
visceral, conaesthetic, sensations so vividly present and soul- 
filling in many emotions. All habitual reactions in states of 
emotion, as they become more reflex, and hence less con- 
scious in their actual carrying out, yet come to give, never- 
theless, by their return wave upon consciousness, overpowering 
floods of organic sensation. I think it is due to the fact that it 
is by muscular movements of excess with accommodation, by 
violent, often long-continued, protective or offensive reac- 
tions, that violent pleasure and pain conditions of vitality 
were originally reflected in action, in the history of animal 
life. This exhaustive muscular process taxed for its main- 
tenance all the organic processes, — heart, lungs, etc., — so 
that a great mass of organic sensations were thrown into 
consciousness, and by unbroken association came to stand 
themselves, in union with muscular sensations, for the 
damaging or beneficial kinds 0} stimulation that at first 
excited pleasure or pain, even when the object actually 
present has no intrinsic emotional value. And so far as 
they were themselves vitalizing or devitalizing, they are 
directly hedonic, and so go on to increase their own good or 
bad effect. It is thus probable that in our more violent 
organic reactions in emotion, often pathological, the organ- 



220 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

ism is exhibiting the wear and tear of the long processes of 
offence or defence that animal forms were accustomed to go 
through when they met the objects which now tend to excite 
these emotions and sensations in us. 

This element explains most of the grosser part of the 
' emotional expression.' This reflex flood explains most of 
the quality and much of the pleasure and pain of those 
emotions which have instinctive expression. So far, then, 
the body of emotion is largely filled up with consciousness of 
habitual actions actually shooting off, these habits being, in 
their origin and gradual formation in evolution, selec- 
tions, all the way through, from excess reactions springing 
from varying vital conditions. Certain laws of their develop- 
ment have been formulated by Darwin and others; laws 
which answer the great question why a particular emotion 
is present when particular bodily attitudes, vaso-motor 
changes, visceral sensations, are also present. This I speak 
of further below. 

And the other aspect of the principle of accommodation 
lets in more light on emotion. In this aspect of accommo- 
dation — named first in order above — we find the sphere of 
new adjustments secured by the constant modification and 
differentiation of old ones. There is a great field of such ac- 
commodation in the fact and function of attention, a thing 
of such clear mental value and such wide bearings that 
special sections are devoted below * to its rise and develop- 
ment. Here and now I can only assume what is there argued 
for, and note the relation of the attention, considered as 
mental function oj accommodation, to emotion. 

Consciousness, we have seen, is the new thing in nature — 
the thing by which organisms show in all cases their latest 
and finest adjustments. And the central fact of conscious- 

1 Below, Chap. X., § 3, and Chap. XV. 



The Theory of ' Emotional Expression* 221 

ness, its prime instrument, its selective agent, its seizing, 
grasping, relating, assimilating, apperceiving — in short, 
its accommodating element and process — is attention. This 
all current psychology admits. And the psychology which is 
aware of its genetic problems will also admit a further point ; 
this — that in the life of the higher organisms, such as pre- 
eminently human life, the mind has superseded all other 
agencies and processes in aiding and securing adjustments to 
environment. If these two things be admitted, — the points, 
to repeat, that mind is nature's great accommodating agent, 
and that attention is mind's great accommodating agent, — 
then it follows that the law of accommodation must get its 
application almost exclusively, in higher organisms, in con- 
nection with acts of attention. 

Now in the later chapter referred to, it is claimed, with 
some indications of proof, that attention is simply the form 
which the ' excess' process, found in our earlier discus- 
sions to be the means of all organic accommodation, has 
taken on in habitual connection with memory, imagination, 
and thought. The attention process is a motor reaction, 
involving all the elements of such reactions to a mental 
content, as these reactions have become, by habit, crystal- 
lized in certain fixed forms of vaso-motor change, muscular 
contraction, etc. Just what elements are involved in it — 
that comes up later. Here we assume this doctrine of 
attention, and go on to ask its relation to our present 
topic, emotion. 

We see at the outset that if attention is the habitual form 
of mental accommodation, what we have said about the 
factors found in lower emotion — the factors all of which are 
genetic elements present together, heightened dynamogenesis, 
reflex feelings of discharge, associated organic disturbances 
flooding consciousness — must be true also of attention. 



222 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

That is, every act of attention must give all these factors in 
kind, but on a higher level — a level at which the stimulus 
which claims attention is now a mental image, a memory, an 
idea. 

We should have heightened dynamogenesis, looking at the 
matter in some detail, first felt as pleasure and pain in the 
activity of attention itself in receiving, holding, using new 
ideas. This is just what psychology does find and calls ' ideal ' 
pleasure and pain ; and it is the basis of the doctrine of Ward 
and the Herbartians that the play of ideas is the locus of all 
hedonic consciousness. Ideal pleasure, simply as such, 
abstracted — as of course in fact it cannot be — from all 
qualities in the content is, on the physical side, heightened 
nervous process in the organic seat of the higher content at- 
tended to. It is just the same, for ideas, that lower pleasure 
is for sensation contents. 

Second, we ought to have certain qualitative elements 
brought into consciousness from the habitual contractions, 
etc., of attention itself; the attention is, in large part, certain 
constant reflex contractions — of brow, and glottis, move- 
ments of skin of skull, etc., together with the organic sensa- 
tions from the vital processes associated with these. This 
is again so evidently the case, that we find certain qualities 
of feeling, called 'emotions of function,' connected with 
movements of the attention : the sense of contraction or ex- 
pansion, of fatigue, of effort, of freshness, of curiosity, of 
interest, etc. 

Then, third, a true analysis of attention shows that there 
are certain refinements of attention, whereby the elements 
which go to make it up vary very markedly according to the 
character of the idea or object attended to. There is visual 
attention to visual ideas, and auditory attention to auditory 
ideas, motor attention to ideas of movement, etc., each made 



The Theory of ' ' Emotional Expression^ 223 

up of its own refined system of contractions and organic 
effects, inside of the wider circle of contractions and effects 
which make them all acts of attention in the generic 
sense. Now, in so far as these smaller refinements of 
effect get themselves grouped into relatively independent 
habits, just so far they contribute new quality to the whole 
psychosis which the given object or idea, claiming the 
attention at the moment, wraps about itself. And these 
constitute the higher qualities, emotional states which we 
call sentiments, higher feelings, theassthetic, the ethical, 
the religious, etc. 1 

The theory of development, in short, requires that we dis- 
tinguish the hedonic from the qualitative element in higher 
emotion. Intellect could not have developed in the first 
place, nor have become the magnificent engine of organic ac- 
commodation, through volition, which it is, if intellectual, 
aesthetic, and ethical pleasures were only the resonance of 
instinct reflexes. Yet even here the qualitative marks, the 
kind of excitement, the main psychosis apart from the 
pleasures and pains of new apprehensions, knowledges, cu- 
riosities, are just as surely, and for the same genetic reasons, 
the resonance of instinct reflexes as are the gross fixed ex- 
pressions of anger, fear, etc., in animals. 

So, taking stock of our net outcome, we find that our prin- 
ciples of development have, assuming the development itself, 
told us to expect groups of elements in consciousness at cer- 
tain stages of evolution. And when we come to examine and 
analyze consciousness at these stages, we find that these 
elements so grouped are just what we ordinarily lump together 
and call emotion. And the predominance of one or other 
element in a marked degree in a particular case is entirely 

1 The reader may consult the classification and treatment of the emotions 
given in my Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II., Chaps. VIII. ff. 



224 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

the ground of difference between this case and others, and is 
entirely a phenomenon of relative development. The infant, 
and the animal which has not that highest engine of accommo- 
dation, — attention, — have the reflex, habit-born, organic 
thing called, it is true, emotion ; but its quality is l rank/ un- 
reasonable, urgent, a matter of nerves and instinct. And 
that is all the infant has, except the pleasures and pains which 
are also sensations, or quotes of sensation. 

But the man — the child plus mind — has the higher 
agent of accommodation, attention, and that supreme form 
of attention called volition ; his emotion has added elements, 
not different in kind, but only in level, and in relative freedom 
from the grosser implications of organic habit. He has refined 
emotions about his thoughts, his ideas, his ideals, his duties, 
his gods. 

My conclusion, then, is that emotion is, in all cases, this : 
pleasure and pain of accommodation, plus pleasure and pain 
of habit, plus a certain lot of qualities contributed to con- 
sciousness by more or less habitual processes of muscle, organ, 
and gland, going on at the time. 

And the expression of emotion is, in all cases, this : certain 
more or less habitual processes going on in the organism, plus 
elements of muscular and bodily contraction due to present 
pleasure and pain. That is all. 1 

1 A partial development of this general view, with special reference to cur- 
rent theories of emotion, is to be found in my article, ' The Origin of Emo- 
tional Expression,' in The Psychological Review, I., November, 1894, p. 610. 
I am glad to say that my conclusions are very near to those reached, by analy- 
sis, by William James in his latest formulation (see the same Review, L, 
September, 1894, p. 516) ; conclusions which, I think, are not just the same 
as those of the chapter on ' Emotion,' in his Principles of Psychology. Certain 
cases of the rise and progress of emotion in the child — its ontogenesis — 
are treated in detail, in addition to what is said in Chap. XI., § 3, below, in 
the volume of Social and Ethical Interpretations. 



Hedonic Expression and its Law 225 



§ 3. Hedonic Expression and its Law 

In the preceding section of this chapter we found two ques- 
tions implicated in this matter of expression : one of them we 
have now attempted to answer, that which concerns itself 
with the psycho-physics of emotion as a phenomenon of con- 
sciousness taken generally. We now come to the second 
question. It brings up for our consideration the fact of par- 
ticular expressions as attaching to particular emotional 
states, and asks how it is that each such particular instance of 
organic and muscular expression could have arisen and come 
to be what it is. 

It has become evident that the general principles of devel- 
opment apply to all expressions, and that in explaining any 
particular case we have only to ask what aspect of develop- 
ment is predominantly concerned. At the same time it must 
be equally true that all such aspects, however we may find 
it necessary to consider them as separate principles to explain 
different classes of phenomena, must nevertheless have their 
common basis in the one original fact of contractility, with 
the modifications and adjustments which it undergoes in 
evolution. 

Now it has become plain that all motor-discharge, so far as 
it is differentiated at all, gets to be so as an index of waxing 
and waning life processes of nutrition, etc. And we have seen 
that the waxing and the waning must have been equally 
original wherever life was present at all. This waxing and 
waning life process must reflect itself in the movements of 
the organism, giving two great types of movement in all life, 
however low in the biological scale. And we have found it 
possible, in the examination of higher forms of life in which 
consciousness with pleasure and pain are clearly present, to 



226 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

classify the organic manifestations correlative to pleasure and 
pain under a similar twofold effect on organic and muscular 
movement. So it has been simply the logic of fact which has 
led us to say that this twofold type of movement, showing 
relative vitality in lower organisms and relative pleasure in 
the higher, is one and the same phenomenon ; and that even 
in the lowest forms of life, waxing and waning vital processes 
are to be considered as the physiological analogue of the 
pleasure-pain consciousness. 

In this fundamental division of movements, therefore, ex- 
pansions, heightened motor energy, and excess discharge, 
on the one hand, and contractions, lowered energy, inhibited 
discharge, on the other hand, we have what I venture to call 
'hedonic expression/ with the law of its twofold manifesta- 
tion. Inside of this all further differentiations of movement 
must arise as special adaptations. It remains to examine 
them further with a view to the understanding of their rise ; 
and in connection with them further light may be expected 
upon this general condition of them. 

§ 4. Habitual Motor Attitudes 

I. The teleology of all special adaptations of movement — 
the reason for their existence, the end which they would have 
in view provided they could think and speak — now becomes 
plainer than it was before. This end is not in any sense 
expression. The organism has no special tendency to show 
itself off, no means of acquiring systems of ' signs' to show 
what is in consciousness beforehand. The only such signs 
are these very typical differences of movement which corre- 
spond to waxing and waning vitality — to pleasure and pain. 
These are expressive because, and only because, they are 
different, and so reflect differences in the processes which 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 227 

issue in them. The subsequent modifications of movement 
of any and of every kind, have quite a different origin. They 
have in view the adaptation of the organism in further detail 
to the conditions under which the life process exists. Their 
end, each of them, is to keep up the stimulations which secure 
the waxing, and to avoid those which bring about the waning 
of life. How can they be expressions of what is not yet se- 
cured or avoided? Of course, all movements which do 
secure one of these ends, and so become fixed as habits in the 
organism, may and do then become signs of the effects on 
the organism which it is their office to secure, and we 
may then reverse the order of rise of the two factors and 
consider, for convenience, the life- process cause and the 
movements which are really means to it, effect. This is 
what the phrase ' emotional expression' does. But the 
'expressions' of emotion, as we have already seen, are — 
apart from the dynamogenic issue of pleasure and pain — 
not caused by the emotion at all. The emotion is the 
outcome of them. 

As far, therefore, as there is any true expression, as far as 
there are any movements which are really in their origin 
the characteristic outcome of what is beforehand in the mind, 
it is all summed up in the one antithesis with which life 
begins : that between organic and vital expansion as express- 
ing pleasure, and organic and vital depression as expressing 
pain. 

This may be put in the general statement already made, 
that all expression, properly so-called, is hedonic expression, 
which is the reflection, in the organic and muscular functions, 
of the relative influence of experience of any kind upon the 
vitality of the organism. It comes vividly before us in detail 
in the later chapter on ' Organic Imitation,' a phrase which 
simply serves to indicate the general method by which, 



228 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

through this one form of expression, the organism works its 
new adaptations. 

The particular organic and muscular states which are asso- 
ciated with the emotions, such as fear, anger, etc., and called 
popularly their expression, must have arisen not, as we now 
see, as expressions of anything, but as co-ordinations and 
associations of reactions which proved useful to the organism 
in maintaining and improving its "vitality. All of them, then, 
were originally utility reactions, and arose each in its place, 
and the system of them as a whole, as special adaptations. 
They fall under the theory of adaptation and exhibit par- 
ticular instances of it. 

So the question of the rise of these groups of movement 
takes a new form, and its answer comes to require that each 
such so-called expression shall be shown in its origin to have 
been useful to the organism in certain conditions of its en- 
vironment. 

This detailed inquiry evidently belongs to the general 
theory of organic evolution. Darwin has himself examined 
the various instinctive ' expressions ' in detail, 1 and proved, 
beyond a question, that most of them were originally useful 
ways of reacting in the storm and stress of maintaining, 
defending, and extending life. Further aid in this tracing 
of the evolution of expression has been afforded by those in- 
vestigators who have analyzed the anatomical and physio- 
logical conditions of many such groups of effects. 2 

The results of their work have not been entirely successful, 
however, as concerns details ; since there has always remained 
over a residue of well-marked effects, accompanying equally 
well-marked emotional states, which could not be shown to 
have been useful to man or animal. Darwin himself for- 

1 Expression of the Emotions. 

2 Bell, The Anatomy of Expression; Mantegazza, Mosso, etc. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 229 

mulated the principle which states the one real organic 
requirement, namely, the utility of a group of movements in 
the life history of the organism. But he did not stop here. 
He found it necessary to place beside this principle certain 
others, which served to explain the cases to which the utility 
formula could not be made to apply. 

Darwin's principle of ' serviceable associated habits,' how- 
ever, is all that the case really demands when we come to 
get an adequate view of the process of development. It is 
now my aim to show that the theory of development stated 
in earlier pages of this book enables us to restate the results 
of Darwin's work, so as to include all cases under the one 
great principle of 'serviceable associated habit,' taken to- 
gether with that of 'hedonic expression' already explained. 

II. The series of facts which gave Darwin greatest trouble 
are those which he gathered together under his 'law of an- 
tithesis ' : cases of animal attitudes in certain emotional situ- 
ations, which seemed to be capable of serving no useful 
purpose of any kind to the animal, but which were very 
clearly just the reverse of other attitudes, which went with 
the opposite emotions and were evidently useful in connection 
with those emotions. For example, — to cite one of the 
cases so powerfully illustrated in the photographic copies 
reproduced in Darwin's book, — a dog in anger strikes cer- 
tain attitudes of defence, such as general rigidity of muscle, 
high back, bristling of hair, retracted lip, forward ears, etc., 
— all of direct use in a fight with his enemy. But the dog's 
attitudes when he feels friendly and welcomes his master are 
just the reverse — general limbering of muscles, flexible turn- 
ings of body, lowering of back, fawning, backing of ears, 
close-lying hair, etc. The emotion is antithetic, so the ex- 
pression is also; that is the only reason, practically, which 
Darwin could give for the animal's attitude in the second case. 



230 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

There are a great many such instances in the series of 
emotional attitudes in animals and man. But we have only 
to state the principle of antithesis clearly, to see that it is 
no principle at all, unless we hold that the emotion causes 
the expression. And even then, we are no better off, I 
think. For we still have to ask why the emotions them- 
selves are different. This, we have seen, we can only answer 
by saying that they are different because the movements have 
been different by which the organism got itself adjusted to 
the particular objects, etc., giving these several emotions. 
We come, that is, back to movements again, and have 
to explain why, in these cases, the movements are anti- 
thetical. 

Darwin himself is as modest here as elsewhere, and only 
says that it is natural that opposite mental states should be 
associated with opposite physical states. But there is no 
reason, so far, that they should in fact. Darwin here makes, 
quite unconsciously, an incursion into the field of popular 
fallacy and of Hegelian logic. It is a perfect nightmare, — 
which should be left to the Hegelians to revel in, — this 
reading into nature of opposites to all her facts, simply be- 
cause the mind's forms of thinking go by contraries. 
Why, if showing the fangs aids an animal when he fights, 
should covering them aid him when he loves? His teeth 
are involved in one case, but not in the other. If rigid 
length aids him in standing up against his enemy in a fight, 
why should contortions be indulged in when he sees a 
friend ? 

The only general fact which in advance seems to make 
these antitheses likely, is the arrangement of the muscles, 
whereby they go in pairs, called 'antagonists.' Each muscle 
of such a pair is held in control by the other; and which- 
ever contracts, the other is involved in some kind of an oppo- 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 231 

site contraction ; so it is easy to say that when consciousness 
is in a state which represents the stimulation of one muscle, 
it is only to be expected that the passage of consciousness 
into an opposite state will not only release the one muscle, 
but, by a kind of organic rebound, stimulate the antagonist. 
This is physiological and true; but it still in no way ex- 
plains the origin of different" contrary attitudes; for it is a 
main task of the theory of development to explain just this 
arrangement of the muscles. How does it come that there 
are antagonistic muscles? What uses called them into 
being? For the muscular system has developed by use and 
fitness. Once answer this by showing the practical use of 
both muscles of each pair of antagonists, and we can then 
explain both the fact that attitudes are antithetic, and the 
further fact that opposite emotions are there with them. 
For we have seen that it is the muscular and organic 
attitudes and associations which give quality to the emo- 
tions. 

It becomes necessary, therefore, to completely reverse the 
popular conception of antithetical expression and Darwin's 
conception also, as far as he leaves the facts which he so 
adequately describes, and shares in the theory that an emotion 
causes its so-called expression. We must find in our theory of 
development by means of detailed motor adaptations, ground 
for the origin of a muscular system which works by antithesis of 
push and pull, forward and backward, contraction and relaxa- 
tion, antagonism, in short ; and with it the detailed differences 
among these attitudes themselves, which correspond to differ- 
ences in emotions, as we actually find them in our experience. 

The latter task is largely a matter of detailed examina- 
tion and classification of the various muscular groups found 
in the different emotions. This has been done with some 
success for many emotions. I shall not attempt to take this 



232 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

farther here. The genetic problem, however, the rise of 
antagonism, is a further question to set before us. 

It has doubtless occurred to readers of the two preced- 
ing chapters, what account is possible of the rise of muscular 
and emotional antagonism. The facts of organic gain and 
loss, contraction and expansion, pleasure and pain, have 
already cost us so many words that it tends to come to mind 
at once as an explanation of the fact of antithetic expression. 
What has been said of hedonic expression, recognizing it as 
the only expression as such, leads us to expect a great divi- 
sion among states of consciousness with respect to their 
hedonic colouring as pleasurable or painful. If organic life 
has from the start manifested itself in two forms of move- 
ment, and if all new adjustments have been effected inside 
of this fundamental bifurcation, then of course the muscular 
system, in its development, must take on the form of a series 
of organs fitted to carry this original antithesis into all the 
details of life. This is exactly the account which must be 
given of the rise of the muscular system, with its pairs of 
antagonists. The muscles represent special habits and com- 
binations of movements fitted either to close up upon and 
hold stimulations, or to draw away from and escape them; 
and these are antithetic ways of behaviour. 

It is evident, however, that this explanation of antithetic 
functions was not possible on the old theory of the nature 
of emotion, the theory that the emotions are so many distinct 
mental acts or functions which ' express ' themselves outwards 
in the muscles. For expressions of such a kind might just 
as well as not come into opposition with hedonic expression, 
or they might clash with the reactions most useful for the 
organism in relation to its environment, or, again, they 
might, by their cross currents, prevent the development of a 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 233 

muscular system on any consistent plan. The old view gave 
rise to all kinds of dualisms; the dualism between pleasure- 
pain and emotion being most of all invited. 1 

It is the force of such a criticism, implicitly felt rather 
than clearly recognized, that has led so many psychologists 
to claim that emotion is only a compounded state of 
pleasures or pains, a position which well deserves the de- 
scription given it by James : 2 "This is a hackneyed psycho- 
logical doctrine, but on any theory of the seat of emotion it 
seems to me one of the most artificial and scholastic of the 
untruths that disfigure our science. One might as well 
say that the essence of prismatic colour is pleasure and 
pain." 

This view of antithetical reactions is also impossible on 
the current biological theories of development ; that is, either 
on the theory that accounts for all development by com- 
pounded repetitions of reactions, alone, or on the more psy- 
chological theory going by the names of Spencer and Bain. 
For this view requires us to recognize an original tendency 
of organic forms to react in two antithetical ways with 
reference to stimulations which give the two original vital 
effects corresponding to pleasure and pain ; and that none of 
the earlier theories do give this recognition, is shown in an 
earlier place. Darwin held — as far as he took up the 
theory of ontogenetic adaptation, as I think he nowhere did 
explicitly — the ordinary biological doctrine of adaptation by 
chance repetition and compounding of movements which 
proved themselves useful; so of course he was unable to 
see any real reason for the existence of systems of move- 

1 See my criticism of such a dualism in the work of Marshall {Pleasure, 
Pain, and ^Esthetics), in The Psychological Review, I., November, 1894, pp. 
619 f. 

2 The Psychological Review, L, September, 1894, p. 525. 



234 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

ments to which no special utility in race history could be 
assigned. 1 

Our conclusion, then, in regard to antithetical attitudes, 

1 It may be said, as it has been said to the writer, in conversation, by one 
who is well informed in biology, that this view which requires the distinct 
recognition of movements toward advantageous sources of stimulation and 
away from what is disadvantageous, is taken by many biologists, and so 
there is no need of argument. With this I do not agree ; and it is well to 
point out the fact that Darwin in this crucial case of antithetical movements 
did not use any such principle. And yet the need of some such real antithesis 
so strongly impressed the mind of Darwin, as is seen in his detailed casting 
about in his Chapter II. for some proof of antithesis, that his attitude seems 
to me to throw his authority somewhat on that side in opposition to the current 
theories which consider the organism practically passive in its uniform 
responses to stimulation. Passages, indeed, might be quoted abundantly 
from Darwin, which show what his doctrine of organic adaptation probably 
would have been if he had developed it. Of course biologists admit the fact 
that living creatures of certain kinds behave as if they found some sensa- 
tions pleasant and others repulsive ; it is the facts as reported by biologists 
that I am resting the case upon. But they have never, I think, made this 
kind of antithetical reaction fundamental to the life process, nor have they 
ever utilized it to explain general motor adaptations. It has been treated 
instead as a sort of outside fact and, as it were, a mystery, a fact which the 
chemical theorists did not like to recognize at all, and one which the vitalists 
cited in support of 'vital force,' 'directive tendency,' and that kind of thing. 
Recently psychologists have taken it up as lending evidence to certain theories 
of the 'psychic properties of matter,' etc. 

In short, this most remarkable of all adaptations in biology has had just 
about the same treatment in that science that the fact of conscious imitation 
has had by psychologists. Conscious imitation has been remarked upon ever 
since Aristotle, vaguely described, and then dropped, simply because psycho- 
logical theory gave no opening for such a mysterious thing. I cite below the 
contradictory utterances of certain psychologists on imitation. 

And when we come to compare the two facts, it is sufficiently plain that 
the theory of adaptation may be reconstructed in such a way as to show that 
this kind of functional selection by movement, and this kind of imitative 
selection by consciousness, are in type the same. 'Organic imitation' and 
' conscious imitation ' — each a circular process tending to maintain certain 
stimulations and to avoid others — here is one thing. Organic and mental 
adaptation is one process and one only, and it works by this contrast of move- 
ments from the start. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 235 

is that antithesis is a fundamental fact of hedonic expres- 
sion; and as hedonic expression is the only real expression, 
the principle of antithesis becomes, everywhere in motor 
development, the one law of expression. The other princi- 
ple, already mentioned, of Darwin's, that of 'serviceable 
associated habits,' is, on the other hand, the one principle 
also in its sphere ; but its sphere is not expression, — its 
sphere is motor adaptation. All adaptations whatever — ex- 
cept the first great division of movements in accordance with 
the law of antithesis — are 'serviceable associated habits,' or 
'utility reactions.' 

Consequently we may say that in any organic attitude 
whatever, the case is the same as we found it to be, in the 
earlier section, in emotional attitudes. There is the real ex- 
pression factor, the new hedonic element, issuing in new 
antithetical phases, by the law of dynamogenesis ; and there 
is, besides, the quality as such, the differencing 'feel' of the 
attitude accomplished, with its habitual pleasure or pain, 
and all the organic associations, which are in all cases due 
to the reflex, consolidated, instinctive, sometimes patho- 
logical, habits of action originally useful. 

Mr. Darwin also finds it necessary to recognize another 
class of facts which he is unable to bring under either of the 
foregoing principles, facts which he puts together under the 
so-called principle of 'direct nervous discharge.' He finds 
over and above the movements which show reactions useful 
to the creature or to his ancestors, and also over and above 
the movements antithetical to the foregoing, certain move- 
ments of the animal which appear as such to follow no law. 1 
This very fact of lawlessness, overflow, accidental issuing of 
the stimulating process right out into the muscular and 
organic systems, is expressed by the phrase 'direct nervous 

1 See his detailed instances, loc. cit., pp. 66 ff. 



236 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

discharge ' ; all it means, therefore, as a principle, is that we 
are dealing with phenomena of stimulation and reaction, 
Such cases are one's convulsive movements when in a dentist's 
chair, the jumping and clapping of hands of a child's glee, the 
lawless gambolling of playful lambs, and the skittishness of a 
horse on a coid day, — movements which are not just alike 
in any two creatures, nor just alike in any two experiences of 
the same creature, — and with it all, various general effects, 
such as trembling, shivering, fainting in fright, flushing in 
joy, blushing in shame, glandular secretions, variations in 
heart action, etc., some of them positively harmful to the 
organism. 

This class of phenomena — facts which Darwin found no 
use for in the economy of organic development — are, from 
the point of view of our theory, most instructive and valuable 
as evidence. They give, to my mind, very direct proof of the 
main thesis respecting the method of organic adaptation. 
This we may see on closer examination, although the points 
are in the main so evident that the exposition may seem tire- 
some. 

We have found that increased vital energies tend to pro- 
duce heightened or excessive motor processes, — Spencer's 
'heightened discharge,' Bain's 'accompaniment of pleasure.' 
We have found that this and its opposite, lowered vitality, 
express themselves in antithetical movements, expansions 
and contractions, advancing and retreating, etc. Again, we 
have found that it is from these antithetical movements that 
all further adjustments or adaptations are effected by 'func- 
tional selection,' those movements of either kind which are 
useful being retained as permanent utility reactions. And 
this scheme of course assumes the constant presence, at 
every stage of animal development, of the excess discharge 
— the 'hedonic expression' of an earlier section. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 237 

Further, the characteristics of movements which represent 
unutilized vital and nervous overflow are plain enough. They 
should be very diffuse, indefinite, purposeless, highly toned by 
pleasure or pain ; diffuse, because they arise from central 
processes of such intensity as to overflow the ordinary motor 
channels already fixed by heredity and habit ; indefinite, be- 
cause so soon as they do get for themselves fixed ways of dis- 
charge, representing in any sense an accommodation of the 
organism to the stimulations which call them out, then at 
once they fall into another category, that of 'serviceable 
associated habit ' ; purposeless, because they represent excess 
energy over and above the regular expenditures called for by 
habitual purposive reactions ; and highly toned, because their 
rise is itself a phenomenon of those vital conditions which lie 
at the basis of the hedonic consciousness. 

Now these are just the characters which Darwin and 
other writers attach to the movements which illustrate his 
principle of 'direct nervous discharge.' 

It is only, therefore, a step to the conclusion that in these 
movements we have, running through all life phenomena, 
high and low, the evidence of the excess processes, and their 
reverse, required by the theory of development. These are 
just the material from which new adjustments are made. 1 
Certain of these 'direct discharges' happen to do some- 
thing for the organism which it never succeeded in doing 
before; this secures pleasure or removes pain, and by the 
law of increased discharge through the same or associated 
channels, these movements pass over to the reign of the 
law of 'serviceable associated habits'; but with it all, the 
issue in movement of the increased vital and pleasure processes 
due to success, has again recruited or depleted the excess dis- 
charge. So the ' circular process ' goes on. 

1 Except when extreme, when they may become useless and destructive. 



238 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

We should find, however, that movements of this class are 
not quite lawless, nor purposeless. If I am right in rinding 
that they are reactions in states of waxing and waning vitality, 

— that they constitute just the hedonic expression, the only 
expression, properly speaking, which an organism has, — 
then they should of course express something. They should 
partake directly in the characters found to mark off all anti- 
thetic movements. Movements which accompany highly 
pleasure-toned psychoses should be expansive, forward, out- 
ward, exciting ; but besides, they should carry with them all 
the characteristic utility reactions which are already asso- 
ciated with pleasurable experiences. Movements, on the 
other hand, which accompany highly pain-toned psychoses, 
should be contractile, inward, repressing, and should carry 
along with them, besides, all the attitudes regularly asso- 
ciated with painful experiences. 

Now I submit that the close observation of these confused 

— convulsive, if you will — sets of movement, do show this 
antithesis to a very marked degree. When they accompany 
pleasures they are found to involve not only those quite pur- 
poseless movements which simply mean diffused overflow of 
energy, but they show, moreover, two very clear kinds of 
utility reaction also. First, in excessive joy, we find not only 
the tremblings, weepings, heart-beatings, and muscle-twitch- 
ings, but also the usual habitual signs of joy which all 
pleasurable experiences show — the laugh, the facial ex- 
pression, the voice tones, the bodily attitudes; and, further, 
certain tensions and movements of very evident utility, in 
grasping, retaining, coming-up-to-for-further-possession, etc., 
found in attitudes of welcome generally. And on the other 
hand, in connection with the random movements shown in vio- 
lent painful emotion, we find as well two classes of habitual 
attitudes: first, those of organic and vital depression, felt 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 239 

as faintness, paralysis, sweating, etc. ; and second, attitudes 
and acts of rebellion, defence, escape-by-removal from stimu- 
lation, such as frowning, setting teeth. And the two systems of 
attitudes characteristic of pleasure are, in general, antithetic to 
those characteristic of pain. 

In fact, so clear is it that these ' direct' movements are 
limiting processes to the ordinary antithetic attitudes, that 
we are able to look upon them as end -terms each in a series 
which recapitulates organic growth with all its purturbations. 
Pleasure begins by bringing out the reactions which are oldest 
in race utility, then as it is continued or increased, those of 
newer formation and less universality, then those peculiar to 
the individual, and finally, at the limit of duration or excess 
of intensity, the purposeless convulsive and random move- 
ments of Darwin. And pain proceeds by a similar series of 
manifestations — tracing reversely the series of adjustments 
acquired in race and individual history, the whole series being 
antithetic, in its great features, to the corresponding series 
of pleasure attitudes. 1 

There is also another principle clearly, although inade- 
quately, recognized by Darwin, which may now be brought 
out ; the principle made more of in James's discussion under 
the phrase 'principle of analogous feeling stimuli.' Darwin 
added a clause to his statement of the law of ' serviceable as- 
sociated habit,' which brings under it a great class of seem- 
ingly useless muscular movements. He says : " We have now, 
I think, sufficiently shown the truth of our first principle, 
namely, that when any sensation, desire, dislike, etc., has led 
during a long series of generations to some voluntary movement, 
then a tendency to the performance of a similar movement will 
almost certainly be excited, whenever the same or any analo- 

1 At the extremes, in both cases, there are convulsive discharges that are 
more mechanical than physiological. 



240 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

gous or associated sensation, etc., although very weak, is expe- 
rienced, notwithstanding that the movement in this case 
may not be of the least use" (italics mine). And he con- 
tinues a little further on: "When we treat of the special 
expressions of man, the latter part of our first principle will be 
seen to hold good, namely, that when movements, associated 
through habit with certain states of mind, are partially re- 
pressed by the will, the strictly involuntary muscles, as well 
as those which are least under separate control of the will, are 
liable still to act ; and their action is often highly expressive. 
Conversely, when the will is temporarily or permanently 
weakened, the voluntary muscles fail before the in voluntary." 1 
The latter quotation may be taken to be the citation from 
the voluntary life of an instance of the principle that similar 
or 'analogous feeling' stimuli tend to bring, in whole or part, 
by complication, semi-inhibition, or lack of inhibition, the 
reactions in movement which are habitual and useful in con- 
nection with the stimuli which they resemble. 

This series of facts, which are, in the sequel, of the first 
importance for mental development, are of especial interest 
here, as showing the relation of the theory of development 
now explained to the older purely biological theory. The 
latter, it will be remembered, finds the exclusive cause of 
development in repetitions of reactions, under complicated 
conditions which force a crossing or compounding of paths, 
in such a way that each single movement, in response to each 
single stimulus, tends to lose its identity, and to become part of 
a larger discharge, which issues in a group of movements co- 
ordinated for a larger use and function. The conception of 
how this compounding takes place in the organism is a purely 
mechanical conception ; a process of the draining of energies, 
first in the channels which are largest, most permeable, and 

1 Loc. cit., p. 48. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 241 

most practised, and then into those less and less so ; the whole 
group being called out on later occasions, as a group, so far 
as any stimulus, which the organism gets, starts the central 
energies into channels adequate to effect the discharge as a 
whole. 

Now this conception of growing complexity, or co-ordi- 
nation in reactions, is quite in order still, on our theory of 
adaptation, and it is indeed even more reasonable than 
before. Just in so far as the organism has a means of its 
own of selecting, duplicating, or maintaining, its stimula- 
tions, by adapted movements, as the 'circular' process enables 
it to do, just in so far is a premium put upon the speedy 
fixing of great drainage channels representing these particular 
adapted movements. And, further, just so far is there created 
the tendency of other, accidental and more trivial, useful or 
useless, processes, to drain off into these great channels. It 
is only an instance of this that the child learns with such re- 
markable speed to make great happy adjustments, each then 
leading to a number of smaller adjustments. The early start 
which all organisms have in the antithesis between the two 
classes of movements which express waxing and waning 
vitality, and hedonic contrasts, all in one — this secures a 
splendid organic tendency directly in the lines of discharge 
which smaller special adjustments need to issue in, and which, 
but for this preparation beforehand, the smaller ones would 
have to make by actual compoundings among themselves. 

In interpreting this process more closely, in the life history 
of organisms, two aspects of it rise to claim special remark — 
aspects which break into psychology as analogies, or explana- 
tions, of far-reaching application, as will appear later on. 

In the first place, there is at every stage of development in 
the animal series, a certain mass of normal process, 'set for 
good,' so to speak, which the creature brings to his experiences 



242 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

at birth. It may be thought of, functionally, as a tendency, 
of the organism as a whole, called its ' hereditary impulse/ 
to take a given course of development, which will in a measure 
recapitulate the course of organic development antecedent 
to this particular stage ; and also as a tendency of the indi- 
vidual creature to acquire actions of particular kinds with 
great facility, by reason of these native organic pathways of 
discharge. The most marked instances of this latter are the 
instincts ; but the tendency is equally present to the perform- 
ance of functions not so completely handed over to nervous 
habit, but still requiring consciousness and somewhat gradual 
learning ; such as speech, standing, walking, thumb-grasping, 
etc. 

Now with reference to the influence of these innate ten- 
dencies, it is easy to see that everything which the organism 
does will tend to conform itself if possible to them. New 
processes of stimulation will set their discharges toward these 
old channels. Old ways of action will try to serve as adequate 
responses to new sets of conditions. To deny this is to say that 
the organism can simply create new habits for itself at the 
call of any stimulus from without. If the organism is one, 
then any new process must fight for its life, especially for its 
life of action. For a genetic view requires us to hold that there 
is no part of an organism, no muscles, no pathways, but those 
which have arisen for a use ; so if a new thing is to be learned, 
it must resist the old ways of action and supersede the old 
ways of use, by overcoming the impulse which already 
urges the organism on, or it must itself accept and subsidize 
the old channels and muscles, and conform, as far as may be, 
to their previous habits of action. 

This latter is the dominating result. All new experiences 
tend to lapse into old ones, to be in their effects on the organ- 
ism identical with them, to have their differences rubbed 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 243 

off, and so to discharge through pathways used by the old 
ones. 

This is a necessary result of an adequate view of the rise 
of neurological habits ; and we will see below that psychology 
directly and imperatively confirms it. The principle of 
Assimilation, treated in a later connection, 1 is a direct re- 
flection in consciousness of this aspect of the law of habit. 
And this is only to say, as Darwin said, that we ought to find, 
in certain states of mind, attitudes struck which have arisen, 
not for use in this condition of mind, but in conditions of 
mind which jeel like it in any respect. But the two processes 
do not discharge the same way because they feel alike ; on 
the contrary, their feeling alike is the sense that their dis- 
charge is the same way. The attitudes are useful in con- 
nection with the earlier stimulations, and for their sakes they 
arose ; but they are also used by these other central processes, 
which thus come to be ' analogous feeling stimuli' for con- 
sciousness. So a great mass of apparently useless processes 
fall after all under the law of 'serviceable habits.' 

But we have not yet got all the light we may — and it 
turns out to be psychological light in the sequel — from the 
consideration of these processes of compounding in the ner- 
vous organism. There is another great way of looking at 
the facts. The use of a given system of pathways and muscles 
for the discharge of certain processes which are different from 
those for which the pathways and muscles originally arose, — 
this amounts, it is evident, to a great series of possible sub- 
stitutions 0} processes one for another in the chain of events 
which a given issue of movement represents. Suppose, in 
accordance with the principle of 'analogous feeling stimuli,' 
I make a wry face at my physician, because the sight of him 
makes me feel in a measure as I did when I took his bitter 

1 Below, Chap. X., § 3. 



244 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

medicines. Here is the substitution of a visual stimulus for 
one of taste ; to an outsider, it would be inexplicable that I 
should so 'express' myself in reference to this man. As a 
fact, emotional attitudes actually found in man and animals 
show cases of connection between the stimulus and its dis- 
charge just as remote as this, and equally unintelligible, 
until we come to see that by the usurpation of old habits of 
movement, a new experience gets permanently substituted for 
an old one, in the economy of the organism's growth, and so 
the conditions of the original rise and form of utility of the 
attitude in question are hopelessly obscured. 

The evident outcome of these facts of substitution is, 
therefore, an exaggerated difficulty in telling how a par- 
ticular attitude or series of organic changes, found asso- 
ciated with an emotion, actually arose; for not only may 
one substitution have been made in the course of race history, 
but many may have been made. This is shown in the rise of 
the 'short-cuts' described in the earlier discussion of the 
theory of Recapitulation. 1 The development of one process 
or function may be so necessary, and its substitution for 
another, and its usurpation of the discharge processes of that 
other, so complete, that the other may quite disappear, or be 
so overlaid with newer superseding functions as to be a mere 
rudiment, an apparently useless appendage to the organism's 
life. But the fact that we can thus account for such cases, on 
the theory of serviceable habits, is itself a sufficient reason 
for doing so. For it thus brings the whole life of organic 
reaction under the one principle of development. 

This has also a very interesting application to the facts of 
consciousness. I try to show in a later chapter that it is this 
principle of organic substitution that lies at the basis of mem- 
ory, and gives us an adequate genetic theory of the function 

1 Above, Chap. I., §§ 3, 4. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 245 

of representation as a whole. And further, and still more 
surprising, it enables us to see that it is by the 'circular' or 
imitative form of reaction, that the higher motor functions 
have had their rise. For in cases where man, animal, or 
animalcule, acts in a way which does not seem to be imitative, 

— does not seem to have as its objective point the maintenance 
or reproduction of a particular kind of stimulation, or ' copy/ 

— in all these cases, the principle of substitution comes in to 
remove the difficulty. We find that in these cases the original 
discharge processes of a reaction which was distinctly imi- 
tative, which did arise as a special adaptation to a particular 
sort of stimulation, have been usurped by a substitute stim- 
ulus, image, sensation, etc., and so completely, that the 
original stimulation, image, sensation, etc., which really 
effected and accounted for these processes in accordance with 
the law of utility, has been utterly blotted out. The case is 
argued later in some detail under the caption ' principle of 
lapsed links,' * so it need only be said here that this idea of 
'analogous feeling stimuli,' tacked on by Darwin, merely, to 
the end of the formula for associated habit, becomes, in the 
higher reaches of psychological development, an explaining 
agent of wide application. 

One further point should be noted. We are asked how 
it is that there are certain kinds of activities which are not 
only expressive of mental states, but are actually seized upon 
and developed by man for just the purpose, and no other, 
of expressing himself to others, — speech, gesture, song, 
music, fine art, etc. These certainly seem to make simple 
expression an end in itself, and their importance is so 
great that society could not exist without these means of 
intercommunication between man and man. What, it 
may be asked, was the original utility of such actions 

1 Below, Chap. IX., § 3, and Chap. X., § 2. 



246 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

apart from the conveying of a meaning from one being to 
another ? 

It is easy to see, however, that true as this is, — and its 
importance is fundamental to social psychology, 1 — it makes 
no exception to the law of utility. For, of course, the conjoint 
action, the gregarious life, the conveying of meanings from 
one individual to another, is an acquirement itself profoundly 
useful to the individual and to the race. So to say that certain 
movements originally accidental, or diffuse, or hedonic — 
these last mainly, it seems — did convey meanings to other 
onlookers, is only to say that these movements themselves 
are adjustments for utility, as truly as are the movements, 
for example, which secure food. And that these expressive 
actions are selected, and these expressing beings, is only a 
result of serviceable associated habit. The evolution of hand- 
writing, as an engine of expression, from the rude drawing 
of objects, shows that the first tracings were fitted to perform 
just this use, and did so. They therefore survived, and were 
refined upon for this very utility. 

In short, expression is itself an utility. 'Expression for 
expression's sake,' the formula which we so often hear, is 
misleading. What is really meant by it is conscious expres- 
sion, known to be expression, and ratified for the sake of social 
and personal ends. 

A further factor in the ontogenetic acquirement of emo- 
tional attitudes and expressive functions is at once so impor- 
tant and so obscure that I only mention it here; it has 
detailed treatment later on. I refer to the fact mentioned also 
by Darwin, and discussed by Romanes, Mantegazza, and 
others, that the young of animals, and especially young chil- 
dren, get most of these functions by direct conscious imita- 
tion of their elders. The child first really learns what cer- 
1 See the volume, Social and Ethical Interpretations, Chap. IV. 



Habitual Motor Attitudes 247 

tain emotions are, by imitating the indications of them which 
it sees in the faces of older persons. We will see later that 
this tendency to imitate is really the higher conscious form of 
the very way of getting all useful actions which we have seen 
in lower organisms, the ' circular process' way; and so in- 
stead of presenting a new class of facts, it only serves to carry 
the principle of 'circular reaction' into the higher reaches of 
conscious function. In conscious imitation we have an im- 
pulse in which the very method of accommodation has been 
embodied, has become a habit. After knowledge arises, and 
voluntary selection, the first thing necessary to the individual 
in order to direct his life is to find out about all possible ex- 
periences; so the child imitates everything, thus securing in 
its own feeling, by this its own act of laying hold on experi- 
ences, the way of judging of things — and the material of its 
judgments — as to their relative value for further cultiva- 
tion, and their relative difficulty in pursuit. 1 That great 
theatre of experience, that splendid natural kindergarten, 
the spontaneous games of children and animals, plays of all 
kinds, is a practice ground in imitative semblances of what 
is afterwards life's serious business; and the young learn 
how such things feel by these imitations of them, and so get 
prepared for their actual onset in later life. 2 

Looking back now upon all the facts which the various 
'principles,' so called, are used to explain, we find a very 
mixed condition of things covered by the usual phrase 'ex- 
pression of the emotions.' There are utility elements whose 

1 This is developed below in Chap. XI., § 3 (which, however, cannot 
well be read without the earlier sections on Imitation) ; its social and educa- 
tional 'Interpretation' is to be found in the volume referred to. 

2 This ' practice' role, here assigned to play (in the first edition of this 
book), is that now made the essential feature of Groos' important theory 
(see his Play of Animals and Play of Man). 



248 Motor Attitudes and Expressions 

rise by selection is plain; utterly refractory convulsive ele- 
ments, whose lawlessness to all but mere discharge is evident ; 
partially useful elements which had their origin in uses which 
they no longer serve; elements whose usefulness is clearly 
' outlived and which are falling rapidly into decay, — being 
rudimentary,' as the biologists are wont to say, — and various 
groups of confusions evidently due to the grinding, erosion, 
rivalry, of developmental processes among themselves. And 
with all this, we find masses of associated organic movements 
— in the bowels and vaso-motor system, with bizarre and 
uncouth sensations, such as flesh-creeping, shivering, back- 
crawling, fainting, etc. — shifted and shunted from one con- 
nection to another, till they seem to have no reason nor meas- 
ure in their place and function. But the unreason of it all is 
itself reasonable, as we now see ; and we have no right to 
complain at results which we have reason for expecting from 
the carrying out of the general principles of evolution. 



CHAPTER IX 

Organic Imitation 

§ i. The General Question 

We may now proceed to examine more carefully the type 
of reaction in which we have found both Habit and Accom- 
modation to have their rise. 

It will be remembered that we found the life process issuing 
in a great twofold adaptation, — expansions and contractions, 
— and we saw that the former represent waxing vital pro- 
cesses. Then we went on to say that all special adaptations 
are secured by the new hold upon beneficial stimulations 
reached by these expansive, outreaching movements. Thus 
a 'circular' activity is found in operation; life processes is- 
suing in increased movements, by which in turn the stimu- 
lations to the life processes are kept in action. It will also 
be remembered that we found it necessary to postpone to 
the present chapter the further consideration of this type of 
activity. 

In our consideration of suggestion we discovered an ac- 
tivity of a similar kind also, a ' circular ' activity. We found 
it well to describe the child's imitations in terms of very similar 
import, and it has been intimated that, since consciousness, 
of which imitation is generally considered a characteristic, is 
probably never absent from living organisms, possibly these 
two cases of 'circular' activity might turn out to be one and 
the same thing. 

Let us now examine this circular type of reaction somewhat 

249 



250 Organic Imitation 

more closely, finding our clue without more ado in the analogy 
between the kind of nervous reaction which we have already 
seen to fulfil the conditions required by the preceding theory 
of development, and the mental function called Imitative 
Suggestion. 1 

This has the added advantage that it leads up to further 
investigation on the side of psychology, and we have the prob- 
lem of accounting for mental development, although we shall 
consider it throughout as a new stage in the general problem 
already set for solution in the treatment of biological develop- 
ment. 

Imitation is a matter of such familiarity to us all that it 
goes usually unattended to : so much so that professed psy- 
chologists long left it largely undiscussed. Whether it be 
one of the more ultimate facts or not, we now seem to have 
some evidence that it has never had its due in psychological 
theory. If we shall be able to trace its influence in the de- 
veloped mind, even that will not be without its reward ; but 
it may be possible that the law of the organic processes can 
be shown to be capable of an interpretation similar to that of 
the mental. 

We may make it a part of our assumption at the start — 
what I have endeavoured to prove above — that an imita- 
tion is an ordinary sensori-motor reaction which finds its 
differentia in the single fact that it imitates : that is, its pecu- 
liarity is found in the locus of its muscular discharge. It is 
what we have called a ' circular activity' on the bodily side — 

1 See above, Chap. VI., § 4, and Chap. VIII., §§ 1-2. An early statement 
of 'imitation' in this sense is that of Chevreul. He speaks of it not only as 
a tendency to movement in a definite direction from the thought of the move- 
ment, but also as keeping itself going and so 'accelerating' itself. See his 
letter to Ampere on ' A Particular Class of Movements,' quoted by Binet, in 
Alterations of Personality, Eng. trans., pp. 222 f. 



The General Question 251 

brain-state due to stimulating conditions, muscular reaction 
which reproduces or retains the stimulating conditions, same 
brain-state again due to same stimulating conditions, and so 
on. The questions to be asked now are these : Where in our 
psycho -physical theory do we find place for this peculiar 
'circular' order of reaction; what is its value in conscious- 
ness and in mental development, and how does it itself arise 
and come to occupy the place it does? 

It may be well to repeat that we might expect to find imi- 
tations — using the word for the present in this broad organic 
sense — wherever there is any degree of interaction between 
a living organism and the external world. The effect of 
imitation, it is clear, is to make the brain a 'repeating organ,' 
i.e. to secure the repetitions which on all biological theories 
the organism must have, if it is to develop. The muscular 
system is, as Eimer and others show, the expression and 
evidence of this fact. The place of imitation in life devel- 
opment is, therefore, theoretically solvable in two ways: 
(1) by an examination of living creatures for actual imitations, 
and (2) by the deduction of this function from the theory of 
repetition in neurology and psychology — this latter provided 
we find that Nature does not herself present an environment 
sufficiently constant to give enough repetitions to supply 
the demands of neurology and psychology. If this last condi- 
tion be unfulfilled — that is, if Nature does actually repeat 
herself through her stimulating agencies, light, sound, etc., 
sufficiently often and with sufficient regularity to secure ner- 
vous and mental development — then imitation may be a side 
phenomenon, an incident merely. In that case the old bio- 
logical theory, which uses habit alone with lucky chance, and 
takes no account of the nervous process of pleasure and pain, 
or the function of consciousness, in securing accommodations, 
remains available. But I have already criticised that view. 



252 Organic Imitation 

Without taking up these questions again, I wish, while citing 
incidentally cases of the occurrence of imitation, to show the 
importance of repetitions and of the imitative way of securing 
repetitions, in the progress of mind, and thus to supply further 
support to what we may call the ' psycho- physical theory of 
development' outlined in the earlier pages. 

If it be true, at the outset, that organic development pro- 
ceeds by reactions, and if there be the two kinds of reaction 
usually distinguished, i.e. those which involve consciousness 
as a necessary factor and those which do not, then the first 
question comes: In which of these categories do imitative 
reactions fall? Evidently in large measure in the category 
of consciousness; the child is usually conscious of what he 
imitates. If we further distinguish this category in so far as 
it marks the area of conscious life which is ' plum up, ' so to 
speak, against the environment — directly amenable to ex- 
ternal stimulation — by the word 'suggestion,' we have thus 
marked off the most evident surface features of imitation. 
Imitation is then, so far, an instance of 'suggestive reaction' 
— another phrase now sufficiently well defined. 1 And this is 
the most evident meaning of the term ' imitation ' in popular 
and strictly psychological usage. We shall therefore proceed 
out from this more popular conception. 

Now let us look more closely at this kind of consciousness, 
and find its analogies. A mocking-bird, we say, imitates a 
sparrow, a beaver imitates an architect, a child imitates his 
nurse, a man imitates his rector. Calling the idea of the 
result which the imitator is supposed to have some dim or 
clear consciousness of, the 'copy,' we find that we are forced 
to consider this 'consciousness of the copy' very different in 
these several cases. The copy is clearly defined, certainly, in 
the child's mind when he imitates a movement ; and also in the 

1 See above, Chap. VI. 



The Neurological Question 253 

man's mind, although it is very much more complex and asso- 
ciative, when he imitates his rector. But we have a very 
different state of consciousness in the parrot or mocking- 
bird, and this is true even more strikingly in the case of the 
beaver. Indeed, these four cases are typical divisions in the 
psychology of action, i.e. volition (the man), suggestion (the 
infant), reflex action (the mocking-bird), instinct (the beaver). 
Yet suppose I make any one of four remarks to an ordinary 
man on the street: 'the beaver's dam is a good imitation,' 
or 'the mocking-bird's song is a good imitation,' or 'the child's 
movement is a good imitation,' or ' the man's conduct is a good 
imitation ' — this working-man would understand me and 
accept the opinion with no further explanation on my part and 
no further questioning on his part. 

We see, therefore, that even in popular language, these so- 
called kinds of action have something in common, and that 
the word 'imitation' is not greatly strained in expressing this 
common element. There is in all the instances some kind of 
constructive idea, a 'copy,' in more or less conscious clearness, 
which calls the action out, and which it is the business of the 
imitator to reinstate or bring about somehow for himself. 
Now, this is just what I wish to inquire into : the nature and 
significance of this ' copy ' ; aiming, if possible, to show how 
all the forms of action which show this common element could 
have arisen, and what principles of development they imply. 

§ 2. The Neurological Question 

On the physiological side, the simple imitations of child- 
hood present the purest type. And the law of repetition in 
neurology must be brought in, in some way, to supply its 
nervous basis. No one probably will be disposed to deny 
this. We find it possible, also, just as soon as we bring to 



254 Organic Imitation 

mind the action of accommodation and habit, no matter what 
theory we adopt of their mechanism, to show that the element 
common to the child's imitations, and all the other instances 
mentioned, is very plain. Current theories agree that vol- 
untary reactions repeated tend to become organic as direct 
suggestions; that the nervous process becomes smooth 
through habit; that suggestions repeated tend to become 
still more independent of consciousness as secondary auto- 
matic and reflex reactions, by the same principle ; that reflex 
reactions, when repeated, co-ordinated, and inherited, or 
selected from congenital variations, become instincts. All 
this is simply and plainly habit ; and habit is due to repetition, 
no matter, again, how it is secured. 

But it is just as clear to current thought that the whole 
process works also the other way. Instincts are constantly 
being snubbed, contradicted, disused, modified, until all that 
is left is an instinctive torso, a fragment, a tendency merely, 
and this we call, in psychology, impulse ; and these impulses, 
when recognized, ratified, indulged, work up into volitions 
again. Now, all this reverse process is due to the principle 
and fact of accommodation, so familiar to us in view of our 
earlier discussions. And here, again, we may speak only of the 
facts, leaving out of account all the theory of how it is done. 

All this so far is so evident to current thought, that only 
details are now discussed in the books. It only remains, 
therefore, to ask whether the self-sustaining type of nervous 
action, that which is actually present in the child's conscious 
imitation, — i.e. eye-stimulus, then central process, then 
movement of the child's own member, which itself reinstates 
the same eye-stimulus, — whether this is present from the first 
stages of evolution. If so, then habit and accommodation as 
depicted in the earlier chapter will do the work by its aid; 
and psychological development can be read as a chapter of 



The Neurological Question 255 

biological evolution. But if not, then when in the organic 
series did conscious imitation arise, and why? For as sure 
as it is that consciousness gives us imitation at all, so sure is 
it that the nervous system performs, without any violation of 
its ordinary methods, the circular process by which the imi- 
tation goes on. 

This question, I insist again, as I have above, is an ur- 
gent one, and admits of only two possible answers : either the 
neurological analogue of imitation was present from the first, 
and in conscious imitation becomes explicit as mental accom- 
modation, or it has come in somewhere in the biological series. 
I have already said that the second alternative might be 
true, if we allow a certain amount of development under 
constant conditions before the rise of special differentiated 
movements of expansion and contraction — as much de- 
velopment as is represented by simple habit in very low 
organisms whose life is a round of recurring stimulations 
and reactions. 

But it is difficult to see how reactions which represent 
habit merely could get much complexity. In a constant 
environment they would soon exhaust the compounding of 
results due to variety of stimulations. And if the environ- 
ment changed, this compounding of habits would only make 
the organism more rigid and less able to adapt itself. The 
only solution of this point — simply slurred or not seen by 
most biologists — is that adopted by Spencer in his law of 
heightened nervous discharge ; but this only gave a new fac- 
tor, which served historically to bring in the nervous process 
of pleasure and pain, and so to lead to the other alternative 
given above. We have instances of what mere habit will do, 
in higher organisms, in the endless repetitions of the same 
sounds by the weak-minded, by children, and by parrots — 
continued muscular tension kept up by circular discharge until 



256 Organic Imitation 

nervous exhaustion ensues. This is characteristic of catalep- 
tic and hysterical conditions also, as we will have occasion to 
remark in speaking of aboulia. Such persons do not develop 
or grow. They are like wound-up mechanical devices, as far 
as a living organism can in any case be compared with such a 
self-repeating mechanical device (say a swinging pendulum), 
which never gets exhausted nor grows. 

We should expect accordingly to find evidence of the 
imitative, i.e. self-sustaining, type of reaction in very early 
organisms. 

There is, in fact, a distinct trend in recent biological thought 
directly toward a construction of this kind. Indeed, this 
view of nervous adaptation is in line, I think, with the most 
important and thorough contributions lately made to the 
theory of organic movement. Two recent investigators have 
summed up evidence which supplies, in great part, the basis 
long desiderated for a theory of muscular action and develop- 
ment. Eimer has stated the facts which make it probable 
that all the " morphological properties of muscle are the result 
of functional activity." 1 On his view contraction waves 
leave markings which account for both muscle-fibres and 
striation. The series of stages in the development of volun- 
tary muscle which biological science is now cognizant of is very 
striking. That there are no anatomical divisions correspond- 
ing to the striation of muscle is shown by recent observations. 
It remains, then, only to find a physiological conception of 
contraction which, while applicable primarily to unicellular 
creatures, should provide for the development of the organism 
and the differentiation of its parts by repetition of functions, 
with progressive evolution. Natural history requires, in 
the words of Engelmann, that "every attempt to explain 

1 Zeitschrift fur wissen. Zoologie, LIIL, suppl. Bd., p. 67. See also his 
Organic Evolution; yet we cannot accept his Lamarckian views of heredity. 



The Neurological Question 257 

the mechanism of protoplasmic movement must extend to 
all the other phenomena of contractility." 1 

This requirement a recent theory of contractility, that 
of Max Verworn, seems to me, in its type, 2 to go far toward 
supplying, accordant as it is with the detailed histological 
results of Kiihne, Schultz, Engelmann, and others. The 
outcome of Verworn's work is a chemical theory of con- 
tractility which rests upon two known cases of chemical 
action. Kiihne has proved that the oxygen of the air has 
chemical affinity for the outer layer of particles of a proto- 
plasmic mass. The elements set free by this union find 
themselves impelled toward the centre by their affinity for 
the nuclear elements. This new synthesis releases elements 
which again move outward toward the oxygen at the sur- 
face. 3 Thus there are two contrary movements : away from 
the nucleus, or expansion, and toward the nucleus, or con- 
traction. Considering the oxygen effect as stimulus, we 
have thus a reaction which keeps up the action of its own 
stimulus, and thus perpetuates itself, giving just the type 
of reaction which the theory outlined above calls ' circular. ' 
Verworn pushes the claim of this type of vital process right 
up through all the forms of muscular action — just as Eimer 
finds only the one type of function necessary, with repetition, 
to account for all the morphological variations. I am cer- 
tainly, therefore, in touch with biological authorities in 

1 Quoted by Soury, Revue Philosophique, July, 1893, p. 45. 

3 Die Bewegung der lebendigen Substanz (Jena, 1892). Verworn's work 
is well summarized by Soury (see last note). Cf. Burdon Sanderson's 
remarks on ' Chemiotaxis ' in Nature, Sept. 14, 1893, p. 471. I say 'in its 
type,' since the particular chemical mode of stimulation which Verworn 
makes exclusively the basis of life may not be, and probably is not, the only 
kind of stimulus to which the organism effects the same typical kind of circu- 
lar reaction. 

3 The exhaustion of the nucleus by stimulation is shown by the work of 
Hodge, Changes due to Functional Activity of Nerve Cells (Boston, 1893) . 



258 Organic Imitation 

claiming that this type of reaction is essential to neurological 
development; and especially so when we come to see, in 
what follows, that the progress of consciousness can be ac- 
counted for in stages corresponding, in its great features, with 
the stages of differentiation required by the physiological 
and anatomical theories. 

Further, recent researches on the behaviour of unicellu- 
lar organisms and of plants show "the same kind of so-called 
selective or ' nervous property,' with antithetic adaptations 
of attraction and repulsion. These creatures develop not 
by remaining still and awaiting the accidental repetition of 
stimulations by storming or assault. On the contrary, 
they do exactly what we have long thought it the exclusive 
right of higher conscious creatures to do; they go after, 
or shrink from, a stimulating influence, according as its 
former impression has been beneficial or damaging. 1 In 
other words, they perform reactions of the stimulus-main- 
taining, or imitative, type. Binet 2 draws the conclusion 
that protozoa have memory, choice, volition; that is, as I 
should prefer to say, they behave as though they had. Bunge, 
in his lectures on physiological chemistry, after describing the 
actions of certain 'apparently quite structureless' creatures, 
Vampyrella and Colpodella, says, "The behaviour of these 
monads in their search after food, and their method of ab- 
sorbing it, is so remarkable, that one can hardly avoid the 
conclusion that the acts are those of conscious beings." 
"Later on," says a writer in the British Medical Journal* 
"he gives the still more remarkable case of the orcellae. 
Whenever an attempt is made to place them in an inconvenient 
position, they are always able by the development of gas 

1 Jennings's work, Behaviour of Lower Organisms (1906), is now the best 
treatise on its topic. 

2 Psychic Life of Micro-organisms. 3 May 12, 1894, p. 1027. 



The Neurological Question 259 

bubbles of appropriate size and at the proper spot, to right 
themselves . . . etc. 'It cannot be denied,' says Engel- 
mann, 'that these facts point to psychical processes in the 
protoplasm.'" Late researches showing the effect of lights 
of different colours upon these elementary creatures is also 
in evidence. They swarm into certain lights and avoid others. 
Certain bacteria distinguish the trillionth part of a milli- 
gramme of certain substances in solution — showing lively 
attraction — quantities which the tests of chemical reaction 
and the finest chemical balances fail to detect. If extract of 
meat be exposed near these creatures, which feed on it, they 
swarm toward it from afar, crawling over one another. But 
just as soon as a little poisonous extract, in the most minute 
quantity conceivable, be added, the bacteria fly from the 
mouth of the tubes in haste, with all the external signs of 
intelligence and fear. 

In regard to plants, the recent evidence of their active 
responses to stimulations of all kinds by extension and re- 
traction is simply remarkable. Pfeffer has shown the con- 
ditions of the perpetual movements known as geotropism, 
hydrotropism, heliotropism in plants. The fact of twining 
movement in the tendrils of various plants has been subjected 
by this investigator to delicate tests. He finds that the ten- 
drils of the pea will twine about a thread of silk which exerts a 
pressure of only the 100,000th part of a milligramme, while 
the force of the wind and the rain or the constant pressure 
of a stream of mercury, have no effect whatever. The ten- 
drils distinguish between liquid and solid touches. A wound 
upon a plant is a signal for a movement of protoplasm through- 
out the entire plant, and a migration toward the damaged 
part. "It is," says Pfeffer, "just as if the plant had the 
power of moving itself. Its sensibility is developed to the 
highest degree, and it reacts to light, heat, contact, electricity, 



260 Organic Imitation 

and chemical influences." * The researches of Hegler show 
that if a weight be attached to a growth stem of a plant, 
greater mechanical strength is developed in the stem to with- 
stand the weight, a fact analogous to the fact shown by Waller 
that an isolated muscle is able to do more work when a 
greater demand is made upon it in the way of resistance. 2 
Growing roots show enormously increased growth power when 
resistances are put in their way. - The fruit buds of certain 
plants resist the action of gravity, growing upward, as long 
as the germinal vesicles are uninjured. All the other parts 
of the buds and flower may be cut away, but it still grows 
serenely up. But only let the germinal vesicles be re- 
moved, — parts which in size and weight are infinitesimally 
smaller than these others, — and the whole bough sinks 
toward the earth. 

The theory adopted by the great botanist mentioned, 
Pfeffer, in explaining these phenomena, falls in so easily, 
up to a certain point, with those of Eimer and Verworn al- 
ready described, that it even suggests the via media which is 
required by the doctrine of accommodation through the law 
of 'excess' expounded in the foregoing pages. Says Pfef- 
fer: " Having a view to all the particulars in the process of 
reaction and its effects, we find that the essential principle 
of all these phenomena is to be looked for in the produc- 
tion of a central organic response (Auslosung, detente, release, 
or 'trigger-action'). This is the only definition which covers 
all the phenomena. . . . And it clearly results from it that 
irritability is never simply the result of the stimuli which 
bring out the reaction ; these only serve to discover the prop- 
erties and the specific agencies of the organism itself, and 

1 Pfeffer's 'Address at the first general meeting of the Society of German 
Naturalists and Physicians,' at Nuremberg. See Revue Scientifique, Dec. 9, 
1893, and Nature, April 19, 1894. 2 Brain, XV., p. 388. 



The Neurological Question 261 

that the whole proceedings is due to the peculiar energy of 
the organism. ... A simple mechanical action, for ex- 
ample, which represents an equivalent transformation of 
energy, does not constitute an irritation, although in the chain 
of phenomena due to irritability, there is more than one such 
transformation; for there is never irritation without an ex- 
ternal or internal stimulant which sets in play the potential 
energy of the plant. Here we are dealing with phenomena 
of another order than those of a membrane drawing in water 
by stretching, or of a cell rilling itself by osmosis, or finally of 
a branch bending under a weight." Further, in certain kinds 
of reaction, such as heliotropism, etc., Pfeffer points out the 
ability of the organism to ' release ' its energies again and again 
to the same stimulus, and so to keep its processes a-going: 
" However little the ensemble of effects follow the release au- 
tomatically, nevertheless the organism may prolong a reaction 
once provoked, or, after reacting, re-establish the state favour- 
able to the reaction." 1 Uniform conditions, also, such as air, 
temperature, etc., he holds to afford constant stimulation by 
which the organism is kept in a state of static contraction. 
Plants continue to grow in forced directions some time after 
being again set free. "If the temperature remains constant, 
the plant finds itself in a state of static irritation — a con- 
dition necessary to vital activity. It is in this sense that cer- 
tain permanent influences are general and absolute conditions 
of the functioning of the organism." 2 This, it is clear, is in 
full accord with the theory of Verworn and with the oxygen 
discovery of Engelmann, and recognizes the ability of the 
lowest organisms to produce already reactions of the circular 
or imitative type. 

The general theory of Auslosung, or 'trigger-action/ stated 
by Pfeffer, is as old, he says, as his work on Physiology (1881), 

1 Revue Scientifique, loc. cit., p. 741. Italics mine. 2 Pfeffer, loc. cit. 



262 Organic Imitation 

and his Osmotische Untersuchungen (1877), and he also traces 
it to Dutrochet (1832). This is interesting, I think, on 
account of its close approach to the heightened nervous energy 
of Spencer, which also turns upon a storing up of potential 
energy. Yet I am not able to discover that Pfeffer uses this 
'excess' storage for purposes of the further adaptation of the 
organism: a limitation of view which could not well be 
avoided in observing the actions of plants alone, which do not, 
as animals do, learn new adapted movements before our very 
eyes. He seems simply to recognize it as there, to account for 
reactions actually observed. 1 

Of course this class of facts, which show the same kind of 
selective reaction in lower organisms as in the higher, where 
consciousness is present, 2 may be used to support a certain 
dualism of chemistry and life. This is done among some later 
biologists, the so-called 'new vitalists'; but psychologists are 
becoming so familiar with the problems which demand a 
reconciliation of form and content, and so willing, for purposes 
of science, to state everything in terms of content, that this 
need not trouble them much. It is well to recognize, how- 
ever, that if organic and mental accommodation are, as I am 
endeavouring to prove, one and the same thing, then the 
psychologist may have more right than is customarily given 
him of solving the dualism in this particular case by inter- 
preting even the affinities of chemistry after analogy with the 
selective function of consciousness. 3 

1 Professor Jennings (loc, cit), who advocates the ' trial-and-error ' theory 
of accommodation, insists also upon the complex character of the inner 
release processes. 

2 See an interesting collection of additional facts showing the 'nervous 
property' in low organisms, in Orr, Theory of Development and Heredity, 
Chap. IV. The authors cited are so easily accessible that I do not quote fur- 
ther from very many available instances. 

3 As do, among naturalists, Lloyd Morgan, and among philosophers, 
Paulsen. 



The Neurological Question 263 

The bearing of the present condition of neurological re- 
search is now sufficiently evident from the evidence cited. 
Whatever else it shows, this is clear, that wherever there is 
life there is irritability, nervous property. Further, wherever 
there is life there is the spontaneous selection of stimuli and 
the necessary motor accommodations. Wherever there is life 
there is means of continuing advantageous stimulations by 
drawing up to them by active movement, or by other actions 
whose evident result is the same. Such a property could only 
have arisen by the natural selection of the organisms which 
were endowed, by variation or otherwise (or by its abrupt 
appearance with life itself), with a central physiological pro- 
cess of a kind by which the contracting energies of the organism 
were directed into certain favourable pathways and withheld 
from other pathways. This is the principle of l circular ' ac- 
tion with 'motor excess' as worked out above. 

All this is equally true of the reactions which are con- 
sciously selective or inhibitory ; the two great agents of such 
selection being attention, and pleasure and pain. I ac- 
cordingly claim that the evidence of biology is in favour of the 
conclusion that the phenomena of 'excess' in unicellular 
creatures are, in some way, the nervous analogues to these 
conscious functions. How they are involved in pleasure and 
pain states of consciousness has already been touched upon in 
part. The theory of the rise of attention is to follow below. 

The adaptation of all organisms is secured, therefore, by 
their tendency to act so as to reproduce or maintain stimu- 
lations which are beneficial. 1 In this way only can new 

1 Professor C. S. Minot has called my attention to the similarity to this view 
of that of Pfliiger in his ' Teologischen Mechanik der lebendigen Natur' 
(reprinted from Pfluger's Archiv, Bd. XV., 1877). Although reached purely 
from a physiological point of view, I find Pfliiger' s idea and illustrations quite 
consonant with the views of the text. See especially, in the paper cited, 
§ 3» PP- 37 ff«j trie teologisches Causalgesetz: "die Ursache jedes Bediirf- 



264 Organic Imitation 

reactions be made available for repetition, and so secured to 
habit. But this reaction, which tends to secure a continuation 
of its own stimulation, is exactly the nervous process of con- 
scious imitation. Hence we may say that all organic adap- 
tation in a changing environment is a phenomenon of bio- 
logical or organic imitation. 1 

§ 3. The Physical Basis of Memory and Association 

In the nervous processes so far sketched we have, I think, 
the adequate basis of the development of an organism up to 
a certain point. It is evident that, in it all, the organism is 
directly dependent upon the actual stimulating agencies of 
nature. Sensations, perceptions, objects, are necessary to 
call out the reactions characteristic of it. And who would 

nisses eines lebendigen Wesens ist zugleich die Ursache der Befriedegung des 
Bediirfnisses." 

1 The use of the word ' imitation ' in this wide sense has been justly criti- 
cised ; but I am at a loss to suggest a better term. Besides, it is the essence 
of my contention that the method of organic adaptation is by reactions of this 
identical type with further repetitions of them. The term 'adaptation' 
is too general. ' Repetition,' the word used by the biologists, is too narrow, 
since it is only repetitions brought about in part by the organism itself which 
I have in mind, not all repetitions, as the old biological theory of adaptation is 
accustomed to hold. One of my correspondents — and so also a critic in the 
Academy — thinks ' habit ' covers it; but it is just my point that it does not 
cover it. I am asking just how habit could ever start and be controlled — 
apart from fortuitous lucky chances. Of course this method of accommoda- 
tion itself becomes a habit : the fact of imitation by children shows it. But 
the main function of the thing even then is that of modifying habits by the 
new actions which the child learns through its imitations. If any one will 
suggest a more happy term for the reaction which is at once a new accommoda- 
tion to any sort of stimulation and the beginning of a habit or tendency to get 
that sort of stimulation again, I shall hail it gladly. In the meantime I use 
the word which expresses the type to which the reaction undoubtedly belongs, 
even at the risk of being charged with a desire to psychologize the facts of 
biology ; but I do not wish, of course, to prejudice the argument by a word 
ill-used and suggest 'circular reaction' as an alternative. 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association 265 

expect that the organism could in any way escape this 
dependence? Yet we have already found, in the fact of 
pleasure and pain reactions, that the organism takes active 
attitudes toward the sources of stimulation and thus in a 
measure turns the events of its environment to better account. 
But this is only the start: the marvels of development are 
not yet well begun ! 

Is the occurrence of any reaction, we may ask, possible 
in the absence of the external stimulus which is suited to 
start it? Evidently it is not possible, unless there be some 
way whereby the energies of the reaction in question may 
be started by something equivalent to the working of the 
original external stimulus. 

We have seen how it is that the organism goes out to find 
its stimulus by a kind of imitation; we now find the still 
more remarkable fact for which this only is the preparation 
— but the necessary preparation — the fact of memory. 
Memory is, as everybody says, on the bodily side, the rein- 
statement in the nervous centres of the processes concerned 
in the original perception, sensation, etc., or of others that 
stand for them. These processes, of course, tend always, 
when started, to issue in movement, just the same, no matter 
how they themselves are started. So the function of the rein- 
statement of processes in the act of memory is, in respect to 
the tendency to action which these processes arouse, essen- 
tially the same as that of the processes of perception, sensa- 
tion, or other event which furnished the original of the 
memory. 

But in memory the object or thing remembered is itself 
absent; yet inasmuch as its proper reaction in movement 
comes about just the same, we have a new stage in what is 
still our old friend the 'circular/ the ' stimulus-retaining/ re- 
action. It gets started from the brain centres to be sure, 



266 Organic Imitation 

but it aims, just the same, to bring about the consequences 
which it did when it was directly started by the sense-stimu- 
lation. It aims, that is, to bring the organism into touch 
with the stimulation itself again if it be a desirable one, or, 
in contrary cases, to get the organism away from the stimula- 
tion;. 

This is accomplished in the organism by an arrangement 
whereby a group of processes^ corresponding to what we 
call in consciousness 'copies for imitation,' some of them 
external as things, some internal as memories, conspire, so 
to speak, to 'ring up' one another. When an external 
stimulus starts one of them, that starts up others in the 
centres, and all the reactions which wait upon these several 
processes tend to realize themselves. So, many reactions 
which, but for this, would never get stimulated except when 
the actual material stimulus is there, are started by and with 
others whose stimuli are there. And with the multiplying of 
these secondary or remote ways of stimulation, the more and 
more varied and complex habits of the organism come to be 
less dependent upon the particular external events of the 
world, and more capable of remote stimulation through senses 
which originally did not constitute their stimulus, but which 
by this organic 'conspiracy,' called — I may as well antici- 
pate — association, come to do so ; while the increasing 
variety of the conspiring elements — constantly recruited 
from the new experiences of the world and all represented 
by certain nervous processes — make up a large and ever 
larger mass of connected centres, which vibrate in delicate 
counterpoise together. 

The arrangement thus sketched, therefore, is the physical 
basis of memory. A memory is a copy for imitation taken 
over from the world into consciousness. Memory is a 
device to nullify distance in space and time. It remedies 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association 267 

lack of immediate connection with the come-and-go occur- 
rences of the world and makes the organism to a degree in- 
dependent of them. Every act I set myself to do is either 
to imitate something which I find now before me, or to re- 
produce, by my own action, something whose elements I 
remember — something whose copy I get set within me by 
a 'ring up' from elements which are events or objects in the 
world now before me. 

This neurological theory of memory, advanced with too 
great brevity, is along the lines already announced by Tarde 
and others. 1 Tarde's theory, which I find obscure, is im- 
proved in quotation, and indorsed by Sighele. 2 It may be 
analyzed into two factors, i.e. (a) the securing of repetitions 
by imitation, a speculative idea based upon the mere fact 
that animals and man do consciously imitate; and (b) the 
theory of memory, considered as a means of perpetuating and 
complicating the effects of repetition in mental development. 
This latter factor I find only vaguely and inadequately stated 
by Tarde. It is readily seen that his view, also, assumes the 
fact of conscious or semi-conscious imitation, makes of it an 
original endowment or kind of social instinct, and is, in so 
far, open to the objections which may be urged 3 against 
such a position from the point of view of development ; for 
one of the great problems of the theory of development is to 
account for instincts of all kinds. And, moreover, of all in- 
stincts the social are possibly the most complex and the 
latest. They involve a great measure of the individual 
organic and mental attainment found in memory, imagina- 
tion, emotion, etc. 

1 Les Lois de V Imitation, Chap. III. ; published earlier in an article 
'Qu'est-ce qu'une Societe,' Revue Philosophique, XVIII., 1884, p. 489. 

2 La joule criminelle, pp. 42 ff. 

3 Cf. Bain, Senses and Intellect, 3d ed., pp. 413 ff., mentioned again below. 



268 Organic Imitation 

The theory now proposed, on the other hand, aims at 
supplying this lack. It gives a derivation of imitation based 
upon an analysis of the imitative reaction itself. This 
analysis — the outcome of which we have expressed by 
calling imitation a 'circular reaction,' i.e. one which tends 
to keep up its own stimulating process — gives us a means 
of defining imitation and fixing the limits of the concept. 1 
The third and fundamental factor, therefore, which the 
development stated above, compared with the earlier theories, 
endeavours to supply, is the theory of the rise of imitation 
itself from the simple vital processes of an organism through 
the occurrence, among 'spontaneous life variations' of crea- 
tures whose vital discharges are movements of the 'circular' 
type, which tend directly to secure the repetition or main- 
tenance of certain good stimuli. And, in like manner, the 
suppression of reactions which are damaging or useless 
follows, for by that very fact they lower the vitality of the 
organism and so hinder their own recurrence. This deriva- 
tion of imitation secured, we are able to develop independently 
the two principles urged by Tarde and Sighele, on both sides, 
the bodily and the mental. 

We reach now a new stage in race history. As habit goes 
on forming, accommodation enters in a new form. New 
reactions which prove to be beneficial, have themselves to 
become matters of habit, have to be accommodated to by 
the organism as a whole, have to be taken up into the net- 
work of conspiring processes which represent the sum of 
adaptations to date, being stereotyped in the race by natural 

1 Cf. Tonnies' remarks on Tarde 's book in Philos. Monatshefie, 1893, 
p. 298, showing the need of more definition in this whole field. The rela- 
tion of my views on imitation to those of M. Tarde is made matter of ex- 
plicit remark in the Preface to Social and Ethical Interpretations, 3d ed. 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association 269 

selection. Here it is that the principle of association largely 
gets its great value in nervous and mental development. 

We have found reason to think that mere repetition with 
association would not suffice for development, and that the 
principle of 'organic imitation' must be added, for the 
reason that association alone would simply render habits 
more compact. This is true also in higher development 
after the process of memory comes ; yet here association has 
much wider application. For example, a child does not 
learn to speak by merely getting his accidental vocal muscu- 
lar sensations associated with the significant sounds which 
he makes, though I know that this is a widespread view. 
For at that rate of learning the number of words in his 
vocabulary would be less than the number of days in his 
life. On the contrary, he yields to his tendency to imitate 
sounds, and by strenuous effort succeeds, thus getting a 
great number of significant sounds and their necessary muscu- 
lar sensations. This, now, becomes association's opportunity 
to show the manner of its action — a chance it could not 
have had otherwise. And it does. 

Nervous association does two things. First, it does here 
what it has been seen to do in the lower organisms : it binds 
sense of stimulus and sense of movement together. The 
child who has learned to make a sound, then makes it by 
association whenever he hears it. But second, association 
does more, — and here comes in the very great influence of 
the fact which we have been describing by the phrase 'cen- 
tral conspiracy,' — association brings different reactions to- 
gether as wholes; it links together the elements of copy at 
the centre, so that a stimulus may produce, not only its own 
associated reaction, but, by its association with another 
stimulus, or with the memory of that other, it may suffice to 
produce the reaction associated with the second stimulus, or 



270 Organic Imitation 

a third, fourth, etc. This we have already seen in the fact 
of 'substitution' in the matter of emotional attitudes. 1 

The play of this form of association and its importance 
appear on the mental side in the detailed facts of conscious 
association. This is mentioned below and traced further. 
Suffice it to say that the brain is a great mass of such sensory 
and motor processes bound together by 'association fibres/ 
all attesting the growth of the organ, as a whole, by the 
action of association upon simple functions. The fact that 
brains differ from one another only in degree of associative 
complexity, and the further fact that all complex brain func- 
tions arise from the complication of simple reactive func- 
tions, — these facts are now axioms of physiology. There are 
two general truths involved, however, which are suggestive 
for our present topic. 

The actual exercise of the most complex voluntary func- 
tion involved in thought and conduct involves the motor 
apparatus which is also used by the simple reflex processes. 2 
This has further mention in the chapter on ' Volition/ We 
are able to see now more clearly the reason for it. The new 
more complex functions are born out of the old simple ones 
by this principle of organic association. They are higher 
co-ordinations in which the lower enter as necessary ele- 
ments. The apparatus of the old cannot be superseded; 
that would take away the basis for the new. All develop- 
ment is evolution. When an object approaches my eye, the 
lid flies to. But I use the same muscle when I will to wink 
my eye. In the one case, I stimulate the motor process by 
a percept or memory process, associated with the motor lid- 

1 Above, Chap. VIII., § 4. 

2 See Chauveau on 'The Sensori-motor Nerve Circuit of Muscles' in 
Brain, 1891, pp. 145 ff., and Exner on 'Senso-mobilitat' in Pfliiger's Archiv 
fur die gesammte Physiologic, XLVIII., 592 ff. 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association 271 

movement process ; in the other case, the same motor process 
is stimulated by an outside event. 

The evident fact to be noticed, then, is that the more 
fixed of the two sides — sensor and motor — of the neural 
apparatus, is the motor side. It represents the habits, the 
organism's own repeated responses by apparatus which the 
different senses and the higher mental processes use in com- 
mon. It also represents the great antithesis of ebb and flow 
in the vital processes into the terms of which all sorts of 
stimulation are translated : while the sensory side represents 
the shifting, varying life of stimulation; the relativities, the 
modifications, the reasons for accommodation, in short. The 
sensory centres have been likened by James to a funnel, 
which pours its flood down into the motor channel. Stimu- 
lations can be accommodated to only so far as the processes 
they excite can be drawn off successfully in the motor channels 
established by habit. Motor-habit, then, is the measure of 
nervous and mental unity. As we shall see below, 1 the sense 
of it affords largely the permanence, identity, self -persistence 
of the whole mental system. 

A second fact of great importance arises from the in- 
creased complexity of associations in the brain. We have 
seen the elements of it in the association which one sensory 
process may form with a certain motor process through its 
earlier association with another sensory process more directly 
connected with the same motor process. The oft-cited in- 
stance of the burnt child dreading the fire is a case of it. 
The burn is at first associated organically with the with- 
drawing movement; but the sight of the blaze also entered 
originally into the complex experience of the fire. So the 
sight of the blaze now comes to bring about the withdrawing 
movements directly, although at first it was only the burn 

1 Chap. X., § 3, and Chap. XI., § i. 



2J2 Organic Imitation 

and its pain that were agents capable of doing it. Or, put 
in terms of pleasure and advancing movements: the child 
sees — tastes — grasps an apple. The next time he sees an 
apple, he grasps at it before he gets the taste. If we note 
well that the first order is imitative, i.e. taste, then grasp- 
ing to secure the taste again, and note also that it is by 
simple association, merely, that the real stimulus, taste, dis- 
appears largely from the series — we are at once able to 
give a new meaning to the principle of association. The 
original imitative type seems entirely to disappear from the 
act as soon as the child gets the second order, seeing — 
grasping — tasting; and yet without imitation the reaction 
necessary to the association itself would not have been learned. 
It is possible to say, therefore, as our former chapters would 
lead us to expect, that each new accommodation secured by 
central nervous development is not new at all in principle, 
but rests directly upon imitation and association. Its char- 
acteristic feature, however, is its complexity. And this com- 
plexity is of such a kind that reactions seem to lose altogether 
the stimulus-repeating or imitative character which they had 
to have at first. 

On the nervous side, this result is secured by the forma- 
tion, between different brain areas, of direct connections, 
which take the place of the roundabout connections first 
painfully learned. Pathology is full of cases which illus- 
trate it. Speech is learned by direct imitation through the 
ear, but afterwards gets to be stimulated through the eye; 
that is, a direct connection is formed from the optical verbal 
to the motor speech centre, and takes the place of the course 
through the auditory verbal centre. And it is now common 
doctrine, as I have said above, that the briefer, more auto- 
matic functions may represent, by neurological short-cuts, 
a long series of earlier processes. 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association 273 

This is the secret, also, this fact of associative short-cuts, of 
the abbreviating of phylogenesis by ontogenesis, — already 
noted above. 1 It may be well to repeat the point, now that 
we have had so much to do with neurology. Once let such 
a short-cut get so well established that it represents a more 
powerful organic tendency of habit than the longer process 
which in its genesis it represents; or once let the short-cut 
break in upon connections formerly used by the long — and 
this result it becomes the business of heredity or natural 
selection to preserve. The child, in his own growth, cannot 
develop instincts for the performance of activities which he 
is also to learn to perform voluntarily; for the acquisition 
of volition involves the use in new forms of the very elements 
which would be held fast in the fixed reflexes of instinct. He 
is accordingly born a human infant without developed in- 
stincts, not a brute with them. His nervous system in its 
embryonic development does not fully carry out all the details 
of its ancestral history, but abbreviates them by a short-cut 
direct to the volitional stage, omitting the instinctive stage 
almost altogether. 2 Darwin notes the same falling away of 
certain simple social emotions which in his view lie at the 
basis of the ethical, when once these ethical feelings have 
become well established. 3 

We are able, therefore, in view of the foregoing expositions, 
to make the following general statement: the action 0) the 

1 Chap. 1, § 4. 

2 Professor Minot suggests that "this point might be extended generally 
to the effects of disuse in biology — i.e. the loss of characters." Such a posi- 
tion strongly favours a Darwinian or selective view of the origin of characters. 

3 Exp. of the Emotions, p. 69. I see hardly any limit to the application of 
this principle in the hands of evolutionists. Whatever seems native, a priori, 
may be held to be an outcome whose preparatory stages have been lost by the 
principle of abbreviation. See my own use of it, below, in finding the genesis 
of the sense of identity and sufficient reason (Chap. XI., § 1). 

T 



274 Organic Imitation 

cerebral centres concerned in memory is sufficiently accounted 
for as a development from the simple reactions of the imitative 
or 'circular' type. In these higher functions the principle of 
habit as applied to compounded reactions, fixed by selection, 
takes on the broader form commonly known as nervous l asso- 
ciation.'' 

And yet one additional remark. Just as soon as the copy 
for imitation becomes a matter of memory, a thing ' rung up ' 
in the nervous centres and so already fully there in the or- 
ganism, both in its sensory presence and in its motor worth, 
then it is no longer a thing to be accommodated to. It is then 
a thing already accommodated to. Its influence then is to fix 
more and more steadily the reaction associated with it at first 
by effortful imitation, so that its present imitation — its 
circular process — is now an agent of habit. Notice the great 
utility of the infant's incessant repetition of its own sounds, 
words, movements, etc., in exercising the organs and strength- 
ening its nascent powers. The same is seen in the scale of 
race progress — a species refining and fixing what it has 
already acquired — in the fixing of instincts through the in- 
stinctive imitation of some animals by others, by their young, 
etc., 1 made much of by Wallace. 

As the processes in consciousness fall away, the reaction 
becomes more reflex. So by the extraordinary cunning of 
the organism, the very means of its new adaptations, that by 
which its old habits are modified and broken up, its imitative 
reinstatement of its experiences even at the high level of 
memory, this becomes itself a thing of habit, just as it does 
at the lower level of simple motor adjustment ; sinks down to 

1 Observations bearing on this latter aspect of the case, with quotations 
from Wallace and Romanes, are cited by Morgan, loc. cit., pp. 454 ff. ; such 
as the constant dependence of certain birds' nest-building instinct upon the 
sight of their home nests, etc. 



Physical Basis of Memory and Association 275 

the lower levels of brain co-ordination ; and is found actually 
in the child or animal as an impulse to imitate itself. But in 
the child the impulse to imitate is a matter of consciousness. 
The mental copy, imagined, remembered, is set up and aimed 
at ; imitation is no longer the organism's weapon ; it is now 
the sword of mind, as the following chapters on 'Conscious 
Imitation ' aim to make clear. 1 

1 Professor Lloyd Morgan says, in criticising my usage (Habit and Instinct, 
p. 168), that the word ' imitation' should be confined to " the repetition by one 
individual of the behaviour of another individual." Yet what is the differ- 
ence between my actions when I do what I see you do and when I do what I 
think or imagine you, me, or some one else doing ? In defining the reaction as 
such, it is impossible to maintain the social criterion. The term 'self- 
imitation/ used in the text, and also independently suggested by Royce, is 
sufficient to mark the absence of the social reference in a particular case. 



PART III 

PSYCHOLOGICAL GENESIS 
CHAPTER X 

Conscious Imitation (begun); the Origin of Memory 
and Imagination 

§ i. Certain General Facts and Explanations 

We are now clear of neurological considerations in the 
main, and may trace the development of consciousness. The 
place of consciousness in phylogenetic progress has already 
come up for notice, and we have been able to find in conscious- 
ness a higher sphere of organic accommodation. That is, 
it seemed necessary to assume the analogue of the nervous 
basis of pleasure and pain very early in the life series, in order 
to get any complexity of development at all. Assuming, 
moreover, the truth of our theory of development as now 
sketched, which bases it, from the start, on the two factors, 
contractility, and the pleasure and pain analogue found in 
central 'excess/ we ought now to find the further develop- 
ment of consciousness an illustration of the same processes. 

The rest of our discussions, therefore, may turn upon fur- 
ther analyses of conscious states, whose reason for being is 
evident only when we connect them with the function of con- 
sciousness in evolution as a whole. And as it is the essence 
of our doctrine of accommodation that the imitative reac- 
tion is the type of all organic accommodations, our further 

276 



General Facts and Explanations 277 

interesting task becomes that of tracing and explaining the 
presence of imitation in the development of consciousness. 

We may preface our detailed treatment of this topic with 
two statements already put in evidence, both of which are the 
clear outcome of current psychological opinion. I quote 
them from my earlier work, in which they appear as the 
natural result of a statement of nervous structure and func- 
tion in its relation to consciousness, written for purposes of 
exposition only. 

"All the phenomena of consolidation or 'downward 
growth,' on the one hand, illustrate what is known as the law 
of Habit; all the phenomena of specialization, or 'upward 
growth,' illustrate the law of Accommodation. 

"As for Habit: Physiologically, habit means readiness for 
function, produced by previous exercise of the function. Ana- 
tomically, it means the arrangement of elements more suitably 
for a function, in consequence of former modifications of 
arrangement through that function. Psychologically, it means 
loss of oversight, diffusion of attention, subsiding consciousness. 

"As for Accommodation: Physiologically and anatomi- 
cally, it means the breaking up of a habit, the widening of 
the organic for the reception or accommodation of new con- 
ditions. Psychologically, it means reviving consciousness, 
concentration of attention, voluntary control — the mental 
state which has its most general expression in what we know 
as Interest. In habit and interest we find the psychological 
poles corresponding to the lowest and the highest in the activ- 
ities of the nervous system." The application of these con- 
clusions, especially those italicized, will be plain as we go on. 

The books on psychology which have had the courage to say 
anything about imitation — and they are few — have gen- 
erally, by what they said, only tended to justify the conser- 



278 Conscious Imitation 

vatism of those which had not the courage. It has been a 
topic of extraordinary neglect and confusion. 1 One of the 
latest authors 2 makes certain statements about imitation 
which may be considered typical of the uncertainty which 
seems to shield itself behind eclecticism. 

He says (p. 218) : " Since it only begins to appear about the 
fourth month, when simple voluntary action directed towards 
an end is also first recognizable, it is possible that imitation is 
acquired"; then (219), "As a rapid reaction of a sensori- 
motor form, it has the look of a mechanical process ... in 
many cases there seems to be no conscious purpose. . . . 
There is much to favour the view that it is purely ideo- 
motor and so sub- volitional" ; then (219, note), "It is pointed 
out by Gurney that imitation plays a conspicuous part in the 
hypnotic state"; and again (219-220), "Imitation follows 
on the persistence of motor-ideas having a pleasurable in-, 
terest. . . . The child does not imitate all the actions it sees, but 

only certain ones which specially impress it Hence in most, 

at least, of a child's imitation there is a rudiment of desire. 
For the rest, the abundant imitative activity of early life illus- 
trates the strength of the playful impulse, of the disposition to 
indulge in motor activity for the sake of its intrinsic pleasur- 
ableness" (italics his). Again (109), he makes imitative sym- 
pathy instinctive. 

And yet if we examine these separate statements, we find 
that they rest generally upon fact, and it becomes evident that 
the need in this topic is a theory of the reaction in question 
which will cover facts drawn from an area wider than that 
which individual or analytic psychology is usually called upon 
to cover. It may therefore be taken as the legitimate task 
of such a theory as mine, which not only recognizes imitation 

1 To this Professor Bain's work was an early and acjmirable exception. 
The literature of imitation is now full and valuable (1906). 

2 Sully, The Human Mind. 



General Facts and Explanations 279 

but endeavours also to explain it, to set in order the facts cited 
by psychologists. 

Fact i. The late rise of conscious imitation in the child: 
sixth or seventh month. This fact may be accounted for on 
the very evident ground of the distinction of congenital func- 
tion from the new accommodations of the individual child. 
The child's early months are taken up with its vegetative 
functions. The machinery of heredity is working itself out in 
a new individual. Further, accidental imitations struck by 
him do not give pleasure until the senses are sharpened to 
discern them, and until the attention is capable of its opera- 
tions of comparison, co-ordination, etc.; before this there 
is no element of pleasure in the happy successes of imitations, 
to lend its influence for the continuance of them. As soon as 
these conditions get fulfilled, however, we find not only that 
the child begins to show germinal imitations, such as the 
monotonous repetition of its own vocal performances (ma- 
ma-ma-), but also that its nervous connections give it an in- 
stinctive tendency to biological subconscious reactions, dis- 
tinctly of the imitative type, such as the walking alternation 
of the legs. In the main, therefore, there is instinctive ten- 
dency to functions of the imitative type and to some direct 
organic imitations ; but those clear conscious imitations which 
represent new accommodations and acquirements are not as 
such instinctive, but come later as individual acquirements. 1 

Fact 2. Imitation is often a simple sensori-motor reac- 
tion without conscious purpose, i.e. it is involuntary. This 
is so evident that we have based an important distinction on 
it in an earlier chapter — that between 'simple' imitation, 

1 The term ' instinctive ' used here is in the sense of impulse or disposition 
rather than of definite instinct in the narrow sense. Cf. the discussions of 
Groos in The Play of Man, together with the editor's preface to the English 
translation. 



280 Conscious Imitation 

considered as ' suggestion,' and 'persistent' imitation, which 
turns out to be the first typical exhibition of volition. In 
hypnotic conditions, imitation is clearly ideo-motor sugges- 
tion. This means that, after all, imitation considered as a 
type of reaction, is organic and inherited. It has its place 
among race habits. Infants show remarkable differences, for 
example, in the readiness and facility with which they learn 
to speak. This does not arise from difference in practice, for 
practice never overcomes the difference; but it is due to 
differences in the instinctive tendencies of the infants to a 
reaction which is, par excellence, imitative in its type and 
method of development. 1 

On this basis it is possible to admit the truth of the first 
fact cited, that many imitations are late acquisitions in the 
child's first year, and are, therefore, phenomena of accommo- 
dation, and acquired things involving volition or purpose; 
and, at the same time, admit reflex imitations and explain 
them. 

Further, our theory requires, as a matter of fact, just this 
state of things. Volition would be impossible without this 
great class of quite involuntary sensori-motor and ideo- 
motor, as well as purely biological reactions, which fall under 
the imitative type, and which represent instinctive inherited 
tendencies to movement. In more undeveloped conscious- 
ness, also, we find that the purely suggestive influence of a 
' copy for imitation ' may be so strong, as is remarked further 
below, that reactions follow despite their painful character : 
a fact which would be impossible on the theory that all vol- 
untary action is acquired under lead of the pleasure-pain 
association, without such a basis of native tendency. The 
law of habit, which exhibits itself in the congenital motor 

1 The same is true of handwriting ; cf . Romanes, Mental Evolution in 
Animals, p. 194, 



General Facts and Explanations 281 

tendencies spoken of above, is in these cases too strong for 
the law of accommodation through pleasure and pain, and 
works itself out in conduct in opposition to warnings of tem- 
porary damage to the organism. 

Again, not only is this true of imitation itself considered as 
a phenomenon. It is true of all motor acquisitions, i.e. 
that they may become instinctive in some cases, and yet must 
be acquired in others. 1 I have already pointed this out in 
the case of many instincts and of emotional expression. The 
chick is born with full-fledged space instincts ; man acquires 
'intuitions' of space relations, and in such a finished way that 
Kant thinks them native. Beasts in many cases seem to 
inherit their vocal cries ; man learns his speech, indeed, but 
learns it so well that it gets to be reflex, as is seen in certain 
aboulic patients. And in many cases the original process of 
learning is seen to be identical with imitation from the fact 
that many animals do not learn their characteristic cries, as 
birds their songs, if they do not hear adults of their kind make 
such sounds, although they apparently never consciously imi- 
tate their adults at all. The instinct of imitation is so bound 
up in all these race acquisitions or habits that its exercise is 
often necessary to bring them out. 

Fact 3. Children are more imitative than animals, with 
one or two striking exceptions, such as monkeys, the mocking- 
bird, etc. This is due simply to the fact that the child's life, 
as heredity has laid it out for him, is to be largely one of 
acquisitions or new adjustments, while the animal's is to be 
one of repetitions of race habits or old adjustments. In the 
words of Preyer, 2 "the more kinds of co-ordinated move- 

1 This is considered, under the head of ' duplicated functions,' in the 
discussion of organic selection in Development and Evolution, pp. 72 ff., 
and 28 ff. 

2 Physiologie des Embryos, p. 545. 



282 Conscious Imitation 

ment an animal brings into the world, the fewer is he able to 
learn afterwards." The child is par excellence the animal 
that learns; and if imitation is the way to learn, he has 
1 chosen the better part ' in being more imitative than the rest. 
He is born with a more 'broken up' or mobile nervous or- 
ganization, because his immediate ancestors have had full 
consciousness and volition, whose function is to secure new 
adaptations by choice, memory; etc., in opposition to the old 
reflex adaptations of animal instinct. The long period of his 
infancy has come with this mobility and relative helplessness, 
to give him time to acquire these higher conscious adaptations. 

Animal imitativeness is generally understated, however. 1 
The most social animals, including man, are the most imi- 
tative, as we should expect from what we know about the 
imitation factor in the social consciousness, and this would 
seem also to give us an explanation of the strength of the imi- 
tative tendency in certain animals which show it strongly 
marked. 

Another reason for the difference is to be found in the fact 
that we are usually looking for a particular kind of imitation 
in the cases of animals — the imitation of acts which they do 
not normally perform. The animals have so much instinc- 
tive endowment that most of their performances are taken as 
a matter of nature, and only those clear cases of imitation are 
noted which are novel and rare. Yet it is probable that many 
of the most 'innate' powers of the animals are brought out, 
perfected, and constantly kept efficient, by imitation within 
the group or species. In these cases the presence of imitation 
can only be detected by the artificial separation of mate from 
mate, young from young, etc. ; but interesting cases of crippled 
performances in circumstances of such separation are coming 

1 Cf. the remarkable performances of dogs, cats, birds, etc., in the way of 
imitation, given by Romanes, Evol. of Mind in Animals, Chap. XIV. 



General Facts and Explanations 283 

to light, such as the abortive crowing of young cocks, the 
failure in barking of young dogs, the loss of the form of nest- 
building in young birds, when the example of their elders 
is ruled out in these instances respectively. 1 

Fact 4. The tendency to imitate may come into direct 
conflict with the prudential teachings of pleasure and pain, 
and yet may be acted upon. A child may do, and keep on 
doing, imitations which cause him pain. 

This may be readily explained when we take the facts 
simply in hand, and rid ourselves of current doctrines of 
ethics and theories of conduct. If imitation is anything like 
the fundamental fact which the foregoing account takes it to 
be, — the means of selection among varied external stimu- 
lations, — it becomes evident in what ways pleasure and pain 
may be related to such reactions. Pleasure and pain are now 
seen to be the index of a change brought about by a stimulus 
or by a reaction itself considered as a new stimulus. The 
repetition of this stimulus is desirable, and this is secured by 
further imitation. The pleasure is enhanced by the repeti- 
tion, which thus aims at securing the continued presence of 
the 'copy'; that is to say, the pleasure accruing is some- 
thing additional to the copy or 'object' which the original 
reaction aims at. 

The observation of young children directly and plainly 
confirms the truth of this position. The child invariably re- 
acts at first upon objects, presentations, things present to it. 
So in some circumstances, suggestion, serving to urge him 
on to new accommodations, or simply calling out an old 

1 Professor Lloyd Morgan gives many instructive examples of the influ- 
ence of these accommodations on evolution, as illustrating the theory of 
Organic Selection (cf. Development and Evolution, Chaps. V.-VIL). Since 
the above was written, it has been pretty well established that animal imita- 
tions are largely restricted to functions natural to the species in each case. 



284 Conscious Imitation 

habit into exercise, works in spite of the pleasure or pain to 
which it may give rise. I have illustrated this * with concrete 
cases from infant life. Romanes finds it in the animal 
world. 2 Pathology is full of striking illustration of it. 

Further, the transition from this naive suggestibility to the 
reflective consciousness in which pleasures and pains become 
considerations or ends, is marked in the life history of the 
infant. He learns to dally with" his bottle, to postpone his 
enjoyment, to subordinate a present to a distant pleasure, by 
a gradual process of reflective self-control. He gradually 
grows out of the quasi-neutrality of habit to be a reflective 
egotist. 

In adult life it is undoubtedly true that we usually do 
things because we like to do them and stop doing them when 
they hurt, but even then it is not always so. Just as the 
little child sometimes acts from mere suggestion, at the same 
time moved to tears by the anticipation of pain to result 
from it ; so to the man a copy may be presented so strongly 
for imitation, it may be so moving by its simple suggestive- 
ness, that he acts upon it even though it have a hedonic 
colouring of pain. The principle of accommodation requires 
that it be so, for otherwise there could be no development, 
except within the very narrow range afforded by accidental 
discharges. No new adjustment or adaptation could be 
effected without risk of pain and damage. If the child never 
reacted in any way but in pleasurable ways guaranteed al- 
ready by its inheritance or by its experience, how could it 
grow? So if we sought only what we have already grown to 
like, how could new appetites be acquired? The ethical 

1 Chap. VI., § 3, on 'Deliberative Suggestion.' 

2 "There is abundant evidence of one individual imitating the habits 
of another individual, whether the action imitated be beneficial or useless" 
(Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 220)- 



General Facts and Explanations 285 

truth that pain is a schoolmaster, that we cannot dispense 
with its discipline and also grow — this truth holds as well 
in a measure for the vital organism and its reactions. 

But the question then remains: How is this possible, if 
the criterion of what is advantageous is pleasure, and if the 
organism has developed all the way through on that principle ? 
How can imitation, dictated itself by pleasure and pain, come 
to conflict with the indications of pleasure and pain? 

The answer to this seeming difficulty is evident when we 
remember one of the points already made. The accommo- 
dation-reaction — the imitation dictated by pleasure and 
pain — is so regular in its kind, giving the circular process, 
and involves organic elements so much the same, that it has 
itself become a matter of habit. The tendency to imitate 
has thus become a congenital thing, given by endowment in 
the motor organism. The idea of a movement has become, 
as psychologists so often tell us, itself a tendency to perform 
that movement; yea, the very beginning of the movement. 
The child is therefore actuated by all the impetus of race 
history to imitate, to use his own motor apparatus upon every 
hint which he gets of a movement, and this tendency takes, 
of course, no account of exceptions. The pain, therefore, in 
which a certain new reaction results is, at first, only a partial 
check upon the reaction. It is, of course, in so far a new 
accommodation, and works by association, as far as it can 
do so, to inhibit the movement ; but its influence is ' uphill.' 
It cannot once for all undo the old congenital tendency. And 
for a time the latter wins the day. 

When reflection begins, however, and with it volition, then 
the case is altered. Volition is not possible until just the 
breaking up, modifying, snubbing, of inherited habit, which 
it is the office of new pains and pleasures to bring about, is, 
to a degree, already accomplished. And volition is no more 



286 Conscious Imitation 

than just the ratification of this break-up, and the further 
accommodation to the conditions which have brought about 
the ' break-up.' Man then becomes an agent. He reflects 
upon both the old and the new, and his choice represents 
the best adjustment into which all the elements and tendencies 
within him may fall for future reaction or conduct. But then 
the fight with the dictates of pleasure and pain may become 
only more open, in the degree in which, in his deliberation, 
he may discern the permanent adaptations represented by 
self-denial, social co-operation, etc., as opposed to the tempo- 
rary ones of pleasure and pain. 

§ 2. The Origin oj Memory and Association 0} Ideas 

The neurological function already described as ' the phys- 
ical basis of memory,' * and the manner of its rise, will at 
once suggest the psychological doctrine as well. We have 
found the organism developing a system of centres and nerve- 
connections for the purpose of being relieved of its depend- 
ence upon direct sense-stimulation. By this arrangement 
the processes corresponding to the memory of these sense 
experiences are aroused from within, from other centres, or 
from without indirectly, by associated processes, in lieu of 
the action of the real original object. Such a process thus 
started gives to consciousness the picture or image of the 
object, which we call a 'memory.' 

If, now, to keep within consciousness, the original sensa- 
tion-content, — the stimulus which it is the business of the 
reaction to confirm by repeating, or to banish by failing to 
repeat, thus illustrating imitation, — if this be considered 
as respects the reaction which it arouses, then we may have 

1 Above, Chap. IX., § 3. 



Origin of Memory and Association of Ideas 287 

the same function in kind ascribed to the memory copy as 
to it. But the reaction will then have another office ; its 
province will be to enable the organism to anticipate ex- 
periences, the consequences of which it has once suffered or 
enjoyed. It thus performs its life-preserving reaction before 
the real stimulus comes, and so secures benefit, or avoids 
damage. The child remembers the flame and the pain, and 
withdraws before the fire touches him. He remembers the 
apple, and the pleasure, and secures the fruit for himself by 
reaching. 

Further, we have seen how, on the neurological side, the 
processes ring one another up, so that one may release the 
reaction which originally belonged by right of imitation only 
to another. The question on the side of consciousness, as 
to how the different 'copies' get to ring one another up, in 
such a system, is the question of association. 

They can at first act together, it is plain, only as far as 
the original external things are together. For example, you 
speak a word ; I at once write it. I can do this because I 
heard the word sound when I saw the written word and 
learned to trace it. To-morrow, by reason of a brain lesion, 
I am unable to write the word when I hear you speak it, but 
I can still copy the word when you set it before me. The 
lesion has simply deprived me of the use of the internal 
visual copy which I imitated in writing, by cutting the 
writing-reaction apparatus off from its connection with the 
auditory seat from which this visual copy was accustomed 
to be 'rung up.' But the simpler imitation of the external 
visual copy remains possible. A step further : I see a man, 
and at once write his name. Here the visual image of the 
man rings up the auditory image of the name -word, this 
rings up the visual copy-image of the written word, and this 
I imitate by writing. But all of these images were once real 



288 Conscious Imitation 

external things to me and existed together, in my learning, 
by various twos and threes. Yet if any one had asked me 
why I wrote the man's name, I should have said : ' Because 
I remember it.' Each one of these images is itself a 'copy 
for imitation,' when needed for its own appropriate reaction, 
and only by such associations does its typical character be- 
come obscured. A young child, on seeing the man, would 
say 'Man,' i.e. would imitate the auditory copy which the 
sight of the man rang up. And a certain child of mine 
would probably hasten to ask for a pencil in order to draw 
the man, thus imitating the schematic outline man fixed in 
her memory by earlier efforts to imitate the shape of the real 
thing. In all these cases the reaction follows either directly 
upon an external stimulus or upon a memory image which 
represents another external thing existing at some time along- 
side the first. 

In other words, association by contiguity is simply the 
progress from external togetherness into internal together- 
ness, from fact to memory. Your spoken word brings up 
my written word copy. Why? Because sound and written 
copy existed together when I learned to write, and so on with 
all the instances. 

But suppose a perfectly new external copy rings up an- 
other copy which is only internal: why is this? Thus a 
new man seen brings up an old name written. Why ? Evi- 
dently because there are some other elements of copy either 
external or internal which have been together with each; 
this is association by resemblance or contrast. 'Man seen' 
and 'name heard' were present together when I made the 
old acquaintance, and afterwards 'name heard' and 'name 
written' were associated by contiguity. So when I hear the 
same name, when in conversation with a new face, I think 
of the written name. The sound name, therefore, has been 



Origin of Memory and Association of Ideas 289 

common to both associations, and by it the written name 
arises when I see the new acquaintance. 

I have used this last example, rather than the usual ones 
of the text-books drawn from direct resemblance (a photo- 
graph suggesting a man x ), because it is evident that such 
association by resemblance is only a special and very open 
case of what is elsewhere called the principle of 'lapsed links.' 
In this case, the auditory sound image is just as truly a link 
between the new acquaintance's face and the written name 
of the old one, or between my images of the two faces, one 
in memory and one in perception, as actual similarity of 
feature would be. In such ordinary feature-resemblance both 
copies are in the same sense — the two faces are both seen. 
But similarity, so called, is really a much wider thing. An- 
other centre — the auditory, in the case supposed — may 
come between, as a link. 

Then this link lapses. I tend to behave toward the new 
man as I would toward the old ; even speaking the same 
name to him is behaviour, of course. The new copy comes 
to usurp, so far as it may, the reaction belonging to the old, 
leaving out the link of association altogether. 

Take another case : a musician plays by reading printed 
notes, and forgets that in learning the meaning of the notes 
he imitated the movements and sounds which his instructor 
made ; for the intermediate copies have so fallen away that 
his performance seems to offer no surface imitation at all, 
and pathological cases show that even the intervening brain 
processes become unnecessary, a ' short-cut ' being established 
between sight and movement. His hearing copy-system per- 
sists to the end only to guide or control his muscular reactions. 
But a musician of the visual type may go farther. He may 

1 See my Handbook, Senses and Intellect, Chap. XI. 
u 



290 Conscious Imitation 

play from memory of the printed notes ; that is, he may play 
from a transformed visual copy of notes which themselves 
are but shorthand, or substitute, expressions of earlier sound 
and muscular copies ; and finally the name alone of a familiar 
selection may be sufficient to start a performance guided only 
by a subconscious muscular copy series. So also in the case 
of the patient who can move a. limb only when he sees it ; 
we have to suppose that his properly imitative action on the 
basis of movement memories is now performed through the 
substitution of visual images for these. 

Reflection convinces us that we have now reached a 
principle — when due weight is also given to the explana- 
tions earlier made on the neurological side * — of wide-reach- 
ing application in mental development. We see how it is 
possible for reactions which were originally simple imita- 
tive suggestions to lose all appearance of their true origin. 
Copy-links at first distinctly present as external things, and 
afterwards present with almost equal distinctness as internal 
memories, may become quite lost in the rapid progress of 
consciousness. New connections get established in the net- 
work of association, and motor discharges get stimulated 
thus which were possible at -first only by imitation and owed 
their formation to it. 

If this principle should be proved to be of universal appli- 
cation, we would then be able to say that every intelligent 
action is stimulated by imitative copies whose presence the 
action in question tends to maintain, suppress, or modify? 

A further confirmation of the fact is seen in the process 
of learning to name objects. The child gets the required 
word by direct imitation of the sound heard by him. The 
application of the word to the object keeps his interest and 

1 Above, Chap. IX., § 3. 2 See Appendix C, I. 



Origin of Memory and Association of Ideas 291 

stimulates his effort, but it is no part of his learning. But 
after he has learned to use the term easily, he speaks it directly 
at the object. He no longer needs to keep the sound copy 
before him, and it lapses so completely that if we had not 
been with him when he learned, we should never suspect that 
the association between name and thing was of imitative 
origin. He can name the thing only because he has imitated 
a sound, and then by association the visual image of the 
thing has usurped the reaction created by this imitation. 
Pathological cases show that this concealment of imitative 
origin may go so far that patients may be able to name 
objects seen when they can no longer imitate the same 
sounds when they hear them. 1 It is as if the son of a washer- 
woman refuse to recognize his mother when he takes the social 
position of his wife, even though the wife is spending the 
money which the humble mother has earned. 

The very great importance of this principle, apart from 
the question of fact, is seen in its genetic applications. It 
exhibits the higher mental functions as a great stride in ac- 
commodation. Memory and association do exactly the 
same thing for the organism, later, that perception, sensa- 
tion, contractility, do earlier. Association enables us to 
react to facts which are distant from present facts but allied 
to them. Memory enables us to react to the facts of the 
future as if they were present, thus conserving the lessons 
of the past. Perception enables us to set present facts in their 
proper setting, and thus to react upon them with full reference 
to their significance. Sensation enables us to react upon facts 
according to their immediate worth to the organism. Con- 
tractility, exhibiting itself in ' organic imitation,' is the original 
form of the adaptive reaction which works through the whole 
precess of development. 

1 See Bastian, Brain as Organ oj Mind, p. 623. 



292 Conscious Imitation 

And with these higher reaches of accommodation, we 
now see, the method - of it remains the same. Pleasure 
and pain, mixed up with the reactions of emotion, lead to 
the 'excess' discharge which is consolidated in the atten- 
tion, and selection by attention gets its highest fruition in 
the explicit selective function of consciousness, volition. 1 

The actual dynamogenic parallel between simple sensa- 
tion, on one hand, and memory, on the other, appears in 
the different classes of 'suggestions/ known as sensori-motor 
and ideo-motor, illustrated in detail in an earlier place. The 
facts of suggestion should be constantly borne in mind, since 
they show the transitions in behaviour between reflexes and 
volitions, and bridge what has often been considered a chasm 
of discontinuity. 

§ 3. Assimilation, Recognition 

There are several aspects of presentation and representation 
which seem more reasonable when brought into connection 
with our present topic. The principle of assimilation, made 
much of in recent discussions, clearly illustrates not only that 
a copy-image may be so strong and habitual in consciousness 
as to assimilate new experiences to its form and colour, but 
also that this assimilation is the very mode and method of the 
mind's digestion of what it feeds upon. Consciousness con- 
stantly tends to neglect the unfit, the mat apropos, the incon- 
gruous, and to show itself receptive to that which in any way 
conforms to its present stock. A child after learning to 
draw a full face — circle with spots for the two eyes, nose, 
and mouth, and projections on the sides for ears — will 
persist, when copying a face in profile, in drawing its circle, 
with two eyes, and two ears, and fail to see its error, al- 

1 See Chaps. XIII. and XIV. for the discussion of the Genesis of Volition 
and Attention. 



Assimilation, Recognition 293 

though only one ear is visible and no eyes. 1 My child H., 
having been told that her shadow was herself, called all 
shadows 'ittle Henen' (little Helen). The external pattern 
is assimilated to the memory copy, or to the word or other 
symbol which comes to stand for it. The child has a motor 
reaction for imitating the latter ; why should not that answer 
for the other as well ? As everybody admits, in one way or 
another, such assimilation is at the bottom of recognition, and 
of illusions which are but mistaken recognitions. 

Let us look at each of these facts — assimilation and 
recognition — more closely, from the genetic point of view. 

In what has been said of the principle of association, we 
find ground for the reduction of its particular forms to the 
one law of assimilation. This matter has been ably dis- 
cussed by Wundt. 2 In assimilation — and in the 'apper- 
ception' of the Herbartians — we have the general state- 
ment of all the forms, nets, modes of grouping, which old 
elements of mental content bring to impose upon the new. 
In the light of their motor effects, we are able to construe all 
these elements of content under the general principle of habit, 
and say that the assimilation of any one element to another, 
or the assimilation of any two or more such elements to a 
third, is due to the unifying of their motor discharges in the 
single larger discharge which stands for the apperceived result. 
The old discharge may itself be modified — it cannot remain 
exactly as it was when it stood for a less complex content. So 
this larger discharge represents the habit of the organism in 
so far as both the earlier tendencies to discharge belonging to 
these elements of content are represented in it; but it also 
represents accommodation — i.e. if the assimilation, appercep- 

1 Passy, Revue Philos., 1891, II., p. 614. 

3 Philos. Studien, VII., Heft 3, pp. 345 ff. Wundt, however, confines the 
term ' assimilation' to " associations between the elements of like compounds " 
(Outlines of Psychol., p. 228). 



294 Conscious Imitation 

tion, synthesis, is smoothly accomplished — since it stands 
for a richer objective content. Presentations are associated 
by contiguity because they unite in a single motor discharge ; 
by similarity, because both of them, through their association 
with a third, have come to unite in a common discharge. 
The energy of the new presentation process finds itself drawn 
off in the channels of the discharge of the old one which it 
resembles ; the motor associations, therefore, and with them 
all the organic and revived mental elements stirred up by 
them, come to identify or unite the new content with the old. 
Among these revised elements the attention strains are of the 
first importance ; they constitute largely the sense of activity 
in mental synthesis or apperception everywhere. 

It is commonly held that assimilation stands midway 
between absolute identity of presentations, on the one hand, 
and such difference of presentations, on the other hand, as 
is found in the relative independence of associated ideas, such 
as, for example, the association 'stable — horse.' But this 
is not the true view of assimilation, for there is no such thing 
as absolute identity of presentation, or of mental content of 
any kind. Assimilation is always present. It is the necessary 
basis of the earliest association. For association is, as we have 
seen, on the organic side and at the start, only another state- 
ment for the consolidating of the different reactions which arise 
when the stimulations are multiple or not simple. These 
reactions are reduced to orderly habitual discharges — this is 
association by assimilation, more or less adequate to give the 
sense of synthesis, or unity, or identity. Association has, 
accordingly, a motor foundation from the first. The ele- 
ments hold together in memory because they are used to- 
gether in action. And as the action becomes one, but yet 
complex, so the mental content tends to become one, but yet 
complex also, 



Assimilation, Recognition 295 

This becomes more evident when we call to mind that 
the ' objects' of the external world are very complex men- 
tal constructions. They are for the most part made by 
association. Objects have some very general aspects in com- 
mon, such as colour, resistance, odour, etc. But these bare 
qualities, taken alone, might go to constitute one object about 
as well as another; and really would constitute none. What 
kind of an object such or such a bare stimulus shall turn out 
to be — this is largely a matter of association and suggestion. 
Hence if the mind has to construct anyhow, in each case, and 
to depend largely upon memory of earlier instances for its 
material, then it falls back at once upon those habitual re- 
actions by which groups of associated elements are reinstated 
together and as one content. These old groups thus usurp the 
new elements by assimilation, if it be within the range of 
organic possibility. 

Put generally, therefore, we may say that assimilation is 
due to the tendency of a new sensory process to be drawn 
off into preformed motor reactions ; these preformed reactions 
in their turn tending to reinstate, by the principle of imitation, 
the old stimulations or memories which led to their prefor- 
mation, with all the associations of these memories. These 
memories, therefore, tend to take the place of, or stand for, 
or include the new stimulations which are being thus as- 
similated. 

All perception is accordingly a case of assimilation. The 
motor contribution to each presented object is just begin- 
ning to be recognized in cases of disease called by the gen- 
eral term l apraxia,' i.e. loss of the sense of the use, function, 
utility, of objects. A knife is no longer recognized by these 
patients as a knife, because the patient does not know how 
to use it, or what its purpose is. The complex system of 
elements is still there to the eye, all together : the knife is a 



296 Conscious Imitation 

thing that looks, feels, etc., so and so. This is accomplished 
by the simple contiguous association of these elements, which 
have become hardened into the ' thing.' But the central link 
by which the object is made complete, by which, that is, these 
different elements were originally reproduced together by 
being imitated together in a single act, — this has fallen away. 
So the apperception, the synthesis which made the whole 
complex content a thing for recognition and for use, this is 
gone. 

The great importance of this fact of assimilation becomes 
more evident also when we take note more in detail of the 
nature of the motor processes by which it takes place. When 
we say that a new element is assimilated to old contents by 
exciting the motor associates, and with them all the other 
entrained associates of the old, we lay ourselves open to the 
task of showing what the motor processes are which are thus 
established by habit in any particular case. 

We have shown that in a developed organism the 'excess' 
discharge which secures accommodation, by reinstating a 
stimulus, takes on two great forms by the law of habit. First, 
we have the gross general activities of the muscles and glands, 
reflexes, reactions of emotion, etc., already established ; and 
with these, second, the constant modifications of them made 
in getting new acquisitions of skill, etc. These represent 
respectively biological habit and accommodation. But then 
we find also the more special kind of reaction upon mental 
content found in attention. This has still to be described as a 
more or less consolidated motor reaction fixed by natural 
selection. We shall also see, in considering the attention, 
how it is that every mental content tends to call out the at- 
tention, and how, in turn, the attention modifies the content 
which it calls out. There is, therefore, just so far as this 
reaction of attention upon content is a constant generalized 



Assimilation, Recognition 297 

thing, a general demand for the assimilation of all contents in 
certain great nets or categories representing forms of action ; 
and, in particular, these mental categories are due to felt 
movements of the attention. This may be deferred for later 
discussion. But this is not all of the attention. We find that 
there is a balance of attention process — reflex motor influence, 
muscular strains here and there — peculiar to each great qual- 
ity of content, as being from eye, or ear, etc., and inside of this, 
again, a balance peculiar to each particular individual content 
experienced. We not only have a common attention, in- 
volving the brow-muscles, etc., but various special attentions, 
such as visual, auditory, etc., and further, different successive 
attentions for each experience of the same quality, i.e. let us 
say three successive repetitions of the same sight. If A be the 
gross movements of attention, a, a', a", a ,n may stand for the 
peculiar attentions to sight, sound, etc., and a, a', a", a!" for 
the successive acts of the attention given under one of the 
latter, say under a. 

This means that the sense of assimilation in each suc- 
cessive experience of the same objective content varies with 
the different motor shadings of attention, just as it also varies 
for the different sense contents or qualities by reason of the 
different motor strains, etc., involved in accommodating by 
the different senses. 

Now let us see what the different cases are which will 
arise in successive presentation of the same external object. 
Let p be a new object, a peach. A+a + a, then, by what pre- 
cedes, stands for attention to it; in which A gives the sen- 
sations of gross contraction, a gives the sensations of special- 
sense contractions, such as rolling of the eyes, etc., and a gives 
the sensations of contraction peculiar to this particular object 
only, — say the visual exploration of its figure. Now all this 
works changes in the content p ; as we have seen, by the law 



298 Conscious Imitation 

of assimilation, p gets a lot of associates attached to it by 
which it is brought into harmony or connection with earlier p's. 
It is put into the category P, the Peach. 

Now suppose that instead of being an absolutely new p, 
this p has been seen once before and so has become p'. 
Then we have again the formula for attention, A+a + a', 
where a! differs from the former a. What is this difference ? 
In consciousness I submit the difference is just this, that 
we recognize p' . Analyzed out as it has now been, we are 
able to see what this peculiar sense of recognition rests on. 
For a' differs from a. in two respects: first, in the greater 
ease with which the movements of the eye, etc., for which a 
stands, are made in tracing out the figure of p' (or whatever 
other contractions constitute one attention different from 
another inside the same sense-quality — what we may call 
the 'motor associates' of p'), and, second, in the presence of 
the images belonging to the earlier experience now brought 
up in regular association. As to the first of these elements, it 
is the so-called ' subjective aspect ' of recognition to be men- 
tioned below. As to the latter element, it is evident that all 
the old images will be associated directly with p f . But among 
them will now be the image of memory left by the earlier 
experience of p. With this the new p' is assimilated, to such 
a degree that the two are not held apart at all, but the result is 
one object under the category P, with a group of associated 
elements. We say, then, that p r is recognized. 

Recognition, therefore, generally involves elements of 
content brought together by the process of assimilation, and 
so rests upon attention considered as a phenomenon of motor 
habit, that is, upon the more habitual ingredients in the at- 
tention symbolized by the A + a part of the whole attention 
formula. The objective presented elements are of course 
most evident and important. Their presence is in so far 



Assimilation, Recognition 299 

only the familiar fact of association, which seems easy to 
understand because it is so familiar. But association is 
itself a case of looser and less effective assimilation. Every 
two elements whatever, connected in consciousness, are so 
only because they have motor effects in common. In association 
they have less in common. In recognition they have so much 
more in common that they are presented as one, and the other 
elements of content associated with each of them in similar 
ways through common motor interests, cluster around the 
final outcome as the evident signs of the sameness of the new 
and the old. This is the fact of recognition by Neben- 
vorstellungen signalized by Wundt, under which falls Leh- 
mann's Benennungsassociation. It is what may be called 
recognition by an objective coefficient (Hoffding's Bekann- 
theitsqualitat) , or in current phrase, 'relative recognition.' 

I have before gathered up this side of recognition, based 
both upon mental analysis and objective experiment, in a 
formula which holds that the sense of familiarity with an 
object is due to the reinstatement of the apperceptive or 
relational process of the earlier presentation. 1 According 
to this formula, taken alone, single unrelated homogeneous 
images such as bell-stroke, pure colour, etc., would not be 
recognized, single complex images such as human faces would 
be recognized somewhat in the degree in which the com- 
plexity had impressed itself in the first perception, and clear 
recognition would arise only when the relations attentively 
discerned were clearly brought out in the reproduced state. 
A further result would be that images, when reproduced, 
would largely depend upon and reinforce each other in pro- 
ducing the feeling of familiarity. 

I once had an opportunity to test a little child six months 

x Handbook of Psychology, Senses and Intellect, 2d ed., pp. 176-178, 
where the experiment given in the next paragraph is also mentioned. 



300 Conscious Imitation 

and a half old, with these points in view, and the result was 
quite instructive. Her nurse, who had been with her con- 
tinuously for five months, was absent for a period of three 
weeks, and on her return was instructed first to appear to the 
child simply in her usual dress, but to remain silent ; then to 
withdraw from sight, but to speak as she had been accus- 
tomed to; and finally to appear and sing a nursery rhyme 
which by special care the little girl had not been allowed to 
hear during the nurse's absence. The first result was, that 
the child gazed in a questioning way upon the face, but showed 
no positive sign of a recognition ; yet the absence of positive 
fear and antipathy shown at first toward the substitute nurse 
indicated that the visual image was not entirely strange. 
Second, the tones of the nurse's voice were not at all recog- 
nized, as far as passive indications even of familiarity were 
concerned, — a result we would expect from the greater purity 
and simplicity of the auditory images. The third experiment 
was attended by complete and demonstrative recognition. 
The visual face and auditory rhyme images must have re- 
inforced one another, giving again the old established com- 
plex apperception of the nurse. 

This case also shows, as far as any individual case can, 
that images from different senses vary greatly in intensity 
and in motor effect, especially in calling out influence upon 
the attention, in early child-life, that they are not well differen- 
tiated from one another, and that even at the very early age 
of six months special memories are becoming sufficiently 
permanent to fix general attitudes and habits of action in the 
child. 

Observations are largely lacking as to what elements in the 
particular experiences of early childhood are most influential 
in recognition. Close observations of the periods when 
children recognize pictures of familiar objects would throw 



Assimilation, Recognition 301 

some light upon the point. E. recognized pictures of a clock 
and a cat early in her twelfth month, and called them 'ti-ti' 
(tick-tick) and 'ps-ps' (puss-puss). 1 

But it is clear that the other element in the attention-com- 
plex is also present. There is a change in the a factor itself 
with successive appearances of the same p content. This 
is not itself presented as part of the content, for it only appears 
in the relative ease, facility, of attention itself. It seems to 
attach to the subject, to the agent, to the ego who attends, 
not to the object or content. 2 We have in the recognition of 
an object not only the identification of it as objectively the 
same, but also a feeling of 'warmth,' ownership, self -reference. 
We do not recognize a thing simply for itself; we recognize 
it for ourselves. It has become in a sense ours by having been 
present to us before. This is accounted for by the fact that 
just this motor element it is that carries along with it the 
habitual attention strains, and these attention strains are in 
large part the stable, 'identical' element in the sense of self. 
So self becomes implicated in all recognition just to the ex- 
tent in which the attention is easily stimulated. 

Now, although we have found the objective aspect of recog- 
nition in the represented complexity of content just spoken 
of, — the apperceptive or associative meaning of the thing, — 
so it still remained to find the more uniform element of sub- 
jective reference common, in a measure, to different recog- 

1 See also the case given in Chap. XT., § 3, beginning. 

2 Ward (Mind, July, 1893, p. 353) has pointed out the analogy between the 
feeling of 'facility' which we have when we perform a movement a second or 
third time, and the feeling of familiarity with an object. In my view, they 
are exactly the same thing, except that in the former case the subjective, i.e. 
motor, sense is nearly or quite the whole of the feeling. In object recognition 
the objective content is still objective, but in the sense of motor facility the 
process of voluntary attention is identified directly with the movement, and 
finds in it its own appropriate outlet. The reader should also consult Ward's 
second article (Mind, October, 1894). 



302 Conscious Imitation 

nitions. This I find in the varying readiness or ease oj 
attention in the reinstatement of the content by assimilation 
to its old image and escort ; that is, in the motor sensations 
of adjustment, which indicate in a series the varying degrees 
of strain or effort of the attention. 

The motor associates of each sensory intensity are, there- 
fore, looked at broadly, the A +a+a factors in attention, and 
each such reaction of the attention, when taken in a particular 
case, has also in it a certain degree of readiness or ease of the 
a factor. This has more proof in later chapters which deal 
with 'Attention ' (Chap. XV.) and the ' Mechanism of Revival' 
(Chap. XIV.). When a presentation comes a second time 
into consciousness, it is adjusted to more easily because its 
apperception in attention proceeds upon a basis of ready 
formed association of both these kinds. The relative ease 
of adjustment is felt as the subjective aspect of recognition, 
and the consequent assimilation going on in the content itself 
is the objective aspect. 

Cases are now well known and discussed of so-called 
' absolute ' recognition, in which, i.e., there are no evident 
presented associations to mediate the recognition. The 
vital question is raised : How do such recognitions proceed ? 
The two clear cases known are the recognition of simple 
tones, and that of simple colours. In both these cases, as 
is now evident, the recognition is due to the variable factor 
which is described above — the relative ease of attention in 
adjusting itself to such a tone or colour a second time. 

§ 4. Phylogenetic Value of Memory and Recognition 

It need hardly be said that memory is a function of extreme 
value in race development. Creatures which have in them 
the faculty of anticipating experiences, both pleasurable and 



Its Phylogenetic Value 303 

painful, by the recall of memory pictures in something of the 
original setting, and which can, in consequence, anticipate 
the actual experiences to secure or avoid them by an adapted 
reaction, are most fit for natural selection. Of course they 
survive. This has always been seen by those writers who have 
found in memory a product of the organic accommodation 
of the creature to its environment. But a further word is 
necessary to point out the proper value for selection of the 
added fact of recognition. For a creature might well repro- 
duce its experiences as memory pictures and react upon them 
well, and still not recognize them, just as pathology shows 
is the case in certain anaesthetic hysterics. These patients 
respond in writing to questions which they do not understand, 
or describe in writing persons whom they do not recognize. 
The whole group of facts of 'physiological' or organic sug- 
gestions described in the earlier pages * show the kind of 
'organic memory' which enables the organism to act upon an 
experience as if it recognized it, when the actual recognition 
does not take place in consciousness. What is absent in these 
cases is, as we now know, the finer motor, synthetic, adjust- 
ments of the attention which by their variations constitute 
recognition. 

The adaptations of most of the organisms below mam- 
malian life, and some mammals, possibly, take place, no 
doubt, by such 'organic memory.' They have consciousness 
and also memory in the sense of 'vestiges' of past experi- 
ence; but they do not recognize these images with that 
peculiarly 'warm' sense of ownership which we have when 
we greet the familiar. The attention has not grown to be 
the medium of a sense of self, nor has its development gone 
far enough to give differentiated reactions to many contents. 
They have what may be called first stage associations with 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 2. 



304 Conscious Imitation 

what they remember, i.e. associations of pleasure and pain, 
and of direct adjusted movement. 

The additional fact of recognition, therefore, must have a 
farther value than that of simple memory. And it has, as 
may be readily pointed out. 

By the recognition of an object a creature gets full possession 
of all the benefits both of immediate and of remote association, 
i.e. second stage association, let us say. Recognition follows 
to reinforce or inhibit the reaction of simple memory, for it is 
constituted by the set-back wave of motor associates already 
described as necessary for the assimilation of the new to the 
old. It means, therefore, that the creature that recognizes 
takes a certain attitude, a motor state of contraction, expan- 
sion, etc., a condition of readiness for the protective or defen- 
sive action for which the motor habits of the organism have 
grown to provide. But these may be different from the reac- 
tions dictated by simple memory. Recognition is a sense of 
meaning as opposed to that of bare appearance, and its reac- 
tion is often the violent checking even of the impulses due to 
mere organic sensibility, or to its revival. Creatures which 
consciously recognize, therefore, have an evident shield from 
the ills of the world and a mortgage upon its benefits. The 
dog which sees the whip only for the first time gets the flog- 
ging; but the next time he sees the whip, he recognizes it 
with the immediate impulse to startled attention, fear, and 
flight. The motor elements which underlie are, on the theory 
now developed, what, in his consciousness, w, in part, the 
sense of recognition. I need not add that the escape of this 
dog from his cruel master is the survival of the creature that 
is fit to survive. 

Phylogenetically, the difference in value between memory 
and recognition is one of degree, just as the motor adjustments 
and the escort of associates of all kinds represented in the 



Its Phylogenetic Value 305 

two cases differ only in degree of co-ordination and com- 
plexity. Memory of the organic type, without recognition, 
is present when there is a first-degree association between 
two sense areas, or between a sense and a movement area. 
The reaction represents a first-degree accommodation. But 
in recognition we have the motor organization represented 
by attention and complex central development in the cortex. 
Its reactions therefore represent all the accommodations of 
skill and art, and all the adjustments of will to the demands 
of the life of conduct. 



CHAPTER XI 

Conscious Imitation (continued); the Origin of 
Thought and Emotion 

§ i. Conception and Thought 

Passing on to the sphere of conception and thought, we 
find at once an opening for the law of imitation. The prin- 
ciple of Identity which represents the mental demand for 
consistency of experience, and the mental tendency, already 
remarked, to the assimilation of new material to old schemes, 
is seen genetically in the simple fact that repetitions are 
pleasurable to the infant, and to us all, because of the law 
of habit in our reactions. Just in so far as a new experience 
repeats an old one, to this degree it accomplishes what direct 
imitation would have accomplished, and so makes easy future 
repetitions of it, by the reaction born of the old. This kind 
of accommodation by repetition we have seen to be both 
indicative of pleasure, and in developed organisms, also, the 
cause of it. So in the fact of assimilation, we have both the 
method of central organic development, and the platform 
upon which the structure of thought must be built. To say 
that identity is necessary to thought, therefore, is only to say 
that it expresses in a generalization the method of mental 
development by imitative reaction. 

In an earlier work * I have depicted the progress of con- 
sciousness through the operations of reasoning — conception, 

1 Handbook, Vol. I., Senses and Intellect, Chap. XIV. See also the work 
Thought and Things, Vol. II., Chap. I., and Vol. II., Chap. II. 

306 



Conception and Thought 307 

judgment, syllogism — in its search for identities, and I need 
not enlarge upon it here. The new doctrine of judgment, 
which goes by the name of Brentano, for the first time did 
justice to the demand for unity found everywhere in mental 
operations. Judgment always deals with one object, not two. 
So the mental demand for identity is really a demand, i.e. an 
irresistible tendency to act in one way upon a variety of ex- 
periences. Identity is the formal or logical expression of 
the principle of Habit. It is for logic, which deals with terms 
and copulas, what smooth assimilation and swift appercep- 
tion are for psychology, which deals with elements and pro- 
cesses. 

The principle of Sufficient Reason is subject to a corre- 
sponding genetic expression, on the side of Accommodation. 
Sufficient reason, in the child's mind, is a presupposition 
belief : anything in its experience which tends to modify the 
course of its habitual reactions in a way which it must 
accept, indorse, believe — this has its sufficient reason, and 
it accommodates to it. I have argued elsewhere 1 that a 
conflict between the established, the habitual, the taken for 
granted, on one hand, and the new, raw, and violent, on the 
other hand, is necessary to excite doubt, which is the prelimi- 
nary to belief. And belief follows only when a kind of as- 
similation or reconciliation takes place. But this assimilation 
of the new, the doubtful, to the old, the established, is only 
done by the union of the potencies for action, in a common 
plan of action. Belief arises in the child in the readjustment or 
accommodation of himself actively to new elements of reality. 
Only then does he pass from 'reality-feeling,' which accom- 
panies unimpeded habit, to belief, which comes from a new 
adjustment of the claims of impeded and split-up habits. 

In so far as there is truth in this view, in so far does Suffi- 

1 Handbook, Feeling and Will, Chap. VII. 



308 Conscious Imitation 

cient Reason become a formal or logical statement of the 
fact of Accommodation. It is for logic, again, what the more 
violent reconciliations, hard- bought syntheses, strains to com- 
pass all in a single 'span of consciousness,' are for psychology. 

Put more broadly : whenever we believe a new thing or ac- 
cept it as real, we accommodate our attitude to its presence, 
we make place for it in our store of acquisitions for future 
use ; this means that we are prepared to reproduce it volun- 
tarily and involuntarily, to make it a part of that copy system 
which hangs together in our memory, as representing a con- 
sistent course of conduct and the best adjustment we have been 
able to effect to our physical and moral environment. And on 
the other hand, anything which cannot get into this system is 
not believed; and we say we do not believe it because it 
lacks just in this sufficient ground or reason. The fact is, 
that not believing a thing simply means that we have not been 
able to link it up and hold it in the system of copy elements 
which we have established by long and patient action. 

So here also imitation is the method by which our milieu 
of thought and feeling in all its aspects gets carried over and 
reproduced within us in a system of relationships to which we 
have learned to react. We live by faith, now, not by sight, 
because we depict truth in these relationships whose very 
establishing by our own action has given us the only warrant 
we have of their security. Our consciousness of the relation- 
ships of the elements of this reproduced world, as sustaining 
one another — and sustaining our trust — this is our sense 
of sufficient reason. Our accompanying sense of acceptance 
and endorsement of these copies as suited to draw out our 
action — this is belief ; and the familiarity which repetition 
engenders betokens the growth of habit and the sense of 
identity. 

Conception then arises, too, and it proceeds by identities 



Conception and Thought 309 

and sufficient reasons; and we get in this connection a 
genetic view of the general notion. The child begins with 
what seems to be a 'general.' His earliest experiences, 
carried over into memory, become general copies which 
stand as assimilative nets for every new event or object. 
All men are 'papa,' all colours are 'wed,' all food 'mik.' 
Professor Cattell informs me that his little girl, after getting 
pain from certain humps of head, etc., got to calling all bodily 
pain ' bump-bump . ' And her little brother further generalized 
the term to apply to all mental discomforts, such as disagree- 
able emotions, fears, etc. What this really means is, that 
the child's motor outlets are fewer than his receptive ex- 
periences. Each experience of man, e.g., calls out the same 
attitude, the same incipient movement, the same sort of atten- 
tion, on his part, as that with which he hails 'papa.' In 
other words, each man is a repetition of the papa copy, and 
carries the child out in action, just as his own early response 
to the presence of the real papa carried him out. But of 
course this does not continue. By his learning new accom- 
modations, by his having experiences which will not assimi- 
late, this dominancy of habit is, in part, counteracted; his 
classes grow more numerous as his reactions do, his general 
notions become more 'reasonable,' and he is on the proper 
way to a 'rectification of the concept.' 

The ordinary question of the rise of the 'concept' from 
the 'percept' may, accordingly, get its answer in this view; 
and it is well to go a little more into details. It is only 
partially true that the concept arises from the percept at all. 
It is rather true that the two arise together, by the same 
mental movement, which is apperception or motor synthesis. 
Going back again to that neglected period, infancy, we may 
ask, as a matter of fact, what takes place. 

Suppose, after the very common method of the day, a 



310 Conscious Imitation 

single presentation, A, in the infant consciousness; then 
suppose it removed. The child is now ready to germinate 
in two different ways, forward and backward, future-ward 
and past- ward. He remembers and he expects. Viewed as 
memory, his experience, A, is particular, a sensation, after a 
time a percept. But it includes more than his simple re- 
ceptive state. He reacts to it, and so stands ready to react 
to it again. This readiness is * his expectation, — the ten- 
dency he has to a definite reaction ; and as the only one, it 
stands ready to 'go off' on any kind of stimulus which is 
locally near enough to discharge that way. His memory 
then becomes schematic 1 of the future. Viewed as ex- 
pectation, it is the whole of the child's reality; it is what 
will happen, for it is all that can happen ; he knows nothing 
else. Whatever then actually does happen is at first reacted 
to as A, and remains A, by this active confirmation, if it is 
possible for the child's consciousness to keep it A. This 
meaning that past experience, taken as representing future ex- 
perience, is ' schematic ' 1 1 may call the concept o] the first degree. 
It means that at this stage particular experiences are the 
measure of all things, of things undefined ; since they are all 
that the organism is accommodated to, and they are the 
copies to which all experiences are assimilated if possible. 
The child is under the reign of habit or identity. 

But as particulars increase, they limit one another, both 
in memory and in expectation. In expectation, because they 
are brought only partially under common tendencies of dis- 
charge in action; in memory, because by this tendency to 
partial disunion in action they are subject to the great processes 
of assimilation, association, and inhibition. Instead of A (red 
colour) happening, B (green colour) happens ; and instead of 

1 The word 'Schema* for such a meaning is suggested in the work 
Thought and Things, Chap. VIII., §§ 6 ff. 



Conception and Thought 311 

all my reds being red squares, and all my greens, green squares, 
I have red circles and green circles, red and green triangles, 
fantastic shapes of red and green, etc. This means two 
things in the growth of concepts : first, that my expectation 
is no longer of all reds, i.e. my red is no longer a concept of 
the first degree. It cannot, by passing off through a single 
motor discharge, stand for all colours. Green is in part 
refractory. So red is now a particular as compared with 
green. And, second, my expectation is no longer that all my 
reds will be square, for the same reason as before. There 
will be circular, triangular, irregular reds. But with it all 
they are equally red. In this respect they do assimilate, and 
my red is now general as compared with particular instances 
of red. Now this particularizing of experiences in reference 
to one another is the function of perception, and this gen- 
eralizing of experience, with reference to its single instances, 
is conception, which gives the general, a concept 0} the second 
degree. So conception and perception arise together. 

At the same time, experience takes on another psycho- 
logical aspect. New experience not only adds new items 
opposed to old items, but it leads to revision of the old — 
all through the law of assimilation by means of motor re- 
action. What passed for greens turn out to be partly blues ; 
they accordingly require and secure a modified action ; so in 
my expectation of greens, I may no longer accept blues. 
So also I leave out the demand that my greens be either 
square, or circular, or triangular, i.e. I leave out figure. This 
means that in my more generalized motor reaction to colour, 
I leave out the more special eye explorations which contrib- 
ute the -figure-value to the complex content. Or, to give a 
more concrete example, first, boat is boat with spread sails, 
three masts, and sailors in the rigging; then sailors are 
dropped, sails and masts go, etc. What is left is ordinarily 



312 Conscious Imitation 

said to be abstracted, as, for instance, the concept colour, a 
quality abstracted from particular instances. But true ab- 
straction is not a singling out ; it is rather a paring down, a 
wearing off, an erosion, due to the progress in adjustment 
which the organism has been able to effect under the law of 
the reduction of motor habits by compounding. 1 Thus is 
reached a concept of the third degree. It represents that 
which is essential in an experience, not only as tested by its 
uninterrupted recurrence amid shifting and drifting details, 
but more especially by its regular calling-out force upon me 
in some great fixed way of acting. 

How experience gets collected, related, distinguished, in 
this way, is ordinarily the question of the function of con- 
sciousness itself. I prefer to call the process considered 
thus as mental function, apperception, and to say that both 
the percept and the concept arise by the apperceptive func- 
tion of consciousness, to which a genetic construction is 
given in the earlier pages. They become, on this view, 
simply different aspects of one thing — a synthesis of ele- 
ments. Looked at backward, the product is an event, a 
particular, a percept, a concept; looked at forward, it is 
1 schematic ' of other events still to be determined by action. 

We are now able, in summing up, to make out two im- 
portant points for psychology, I think. First, we see that 
this so-called apperception is genetically the simple fact of 
motor habit, with the assimilations and associations which 
it gives rise to. Motor habit is the great devouring thing 
which throws its arms around all mental details and unifies 
them in its embrace. The most refined and subtile form of 
it takes place higher in attention. Attention is the vehicle of 

1 See above, Chap. VIII., § 4. For a later development of the logical side 
of the 'general/ the work Thought and Things, Vol. I., Chaps. VIII., X., 
may be consulted. 



Conception and Thought 313 

apperception; as psychologists now agree it supplies the 
'form' to every 'content.' To say this, however, is only to 
say that attention, representing as it does the most refined 
and most central forms of motor reaction upon revived mental 
content — that its adjustments are the medium of concep- 
tion, thought, reasoning, of all possible groupings and arrang- 
ings in the mind. Thought, therefore, exhibits a new stage 
in motor accommodation. It shows the organism's adjust- 
ments to the relationships of truth, as memory, perception, 
sensation, show its adjustments to those of fact. The mechan- 
ism of voluntary attention, by which this selection or adjust- 
ment proceeds, is described in a later chapter. 

The second thing which may now be said, is that this 
view shows why we have never been able to find a mental 
picture or content for a 'general notion.' Attempts at this 
culminated but did not terminate with Hume. It is evident 
that the ' general ' or ' abstract ' is not a content at all. It is 
an attitude, an expectation, a motor tendency. It is the 
possibility of a reaction which will answer equally for a 
great many particular experiences. As far as there are the 
particular images which Hume pointed out, and such pro- 
cesses of composition as those made much of by Waitz — these 
are both true statements of partial aspects of the broader 
fact of assimilation which has been given general treatment 
in the exposition above. 1 

1 I may note the agreement intimated in the following quotations from a 
Syllabus of Lectures by Professor Royce : " All general ideas are the mental 
aspects of habits of response in presence of those general characters of things 
to which the ideas in question relate. Without motor habits, no ideas;" 
"consciously general ideas are the mental aspects of deliberately formed 
habits of response to the general characters of things; and for that very 
reason are modifiable in definite ways, and are, accordingly, more or less suc- 
cessfully adjustable to decidedly novel conditions. Of such deliberate habits 
of response the processes of language are a familiar example." "These attri- 
butes of Deliberateness and Modifiability are in general due to the Influence 



314 Conscious Imitation 



§ 2. Conception as Class-recognition 

From what has been said of the formation of the general 
notion, its relation to recognition becomes interesting. This 
point has never been made clear, I think, on any of the old 
theories. How is it that a single object is recognized as 
belonging to the class which is covered by a general concept ? 
It is evident that this presents a different phase of recogni- 
tion from that which comes to view in the recognition of a 
single object as the same single object. Calling this further 
kind of recognition 'class- recognition/ we find it now pos- 
sible to suggest an explanation of it. 

We found convenient, it will be remembered, a certain 
formula in speaking of the elements involved in attention; 
the formula A + a+a. A represents the fixed, habitual, 
always-present strains, stresses, organic movings, etc., in- 
volved in every act of attention. This element involves the 
stable elements of the sense of self, and so carries self-recog- 
nition or sense of personal identity with it. This is the 
extreme case of recognition on the habit side. The third 
element, a, further has already been seen to give us, in its 
changes from one to another experience of the same object 
or content, the sense of recognition at the other extreme, 
the accommodation extreme, the absolute recognitions from 

of the Imitative Function. For imitation, although founded on instinct, im- 
plies for its development Deliberateness and Plasticity of adjustment. Ra- 
tional General Ideas are therefore, on the whole, products of imitation, are 
the mental aspects of imitative motor habits of response to the socially recog- 
nized general aspects of things." 

The true ' general,' however, is a meaning of established habit; a retro- 
spective meaning, in contrast with the ' schematic ' or prospective meaning 
which is one of accommodation to new cases as yet not tested nor assimi- 
lated. The distinction is worked out in the treatise on genetic logic (Thought 
and Things, Vol. I.). 



Conception as Class-recognition 315 

which objective complexity may be largely absent. Now, 
in the middle, in the a element, we find the very common 
fact of class- recognition accounted for, in the main. The 
formation of class notions we have seen to be by union, 
coalescence, of motor processes, with assimilations of new 
elements of content to old habitual schemes. Now the atten- 
tion is directly implicated in all these class formations. In- 
deed, it is by the training of attention in this way that the 
most stable class divisions are formed, i.e. those which mark 
off the great quality-types of mental processes. One's atten- 
tion is visual, or auditive, or motor, as it gets habitually 
exercised with one or other of the senses. 1 So the elements, 
in an act of attention, which arise from the contractions 
peculiar to one kind of content, remaining relatively constant 
for all instances of that kind of content, give us the recogni- 
tion-coefficient for that class. I recognize a visual picture as 
something I have seen, because it stirs up that a element of 
attention which consists in the motor revivals, reverbera- 
tions, etc., of the eyebrow, frown-muscles, scalp shif tings, 
etc., peculiar to visual attention. Auditory class- recognition 
proceeds, similarly, upon revived auditory attention- strains, 
etc. So we have in the a element in the attention formula 
sufficient explanation of class- recognition, and of its position 
midway between recognition of self and recognition of single 
objects, qua single. Of course, as Wundt says, just in so 
far as a single object is recognized as complex, and by reason 
of its complexity, just so far it tends to become a case of 
class- recognition; inasmuch as the relationships inside of 
which its assimilation proceeds are common nets for a 
possibly varied filling. 

The three recognition phenomena, therefore, which this 
scheme sets in order are, self-identity (A), the great ground - 
1 This is taken up in some detail in the chapter on Attention (Chap. XV.)- 



316 Conscious Imitation 

swell of organic habit, and mental sameness; class- recogni- 
tion (a), covering the wide objective side, the contents sub- 
ject to assimilation in classes; and absolute recognition (a), 
the refined adjustments in which present functional elements 
are paramount. The motor formula for attention, then, adds 
up these three elements, all of which are facts of attention, 
giving Att. =i + fl + a. 

§ 3. Emotion and Sentiment x 

Again, in the affective life we find evidence of the working 
of the imitative principle. Emotion we have seen to be, 
largely, in its qualitative marks, a revival product, a cluster- 
ing, so to speak, of organic and muscular reverberations 
about revived elements of content. So the production of 
emotion depends upon the reinstatement, by association or 
action, of parts of the ideal copy system which it is the func- 
tion of memory and association to build up and to preserve. 
This follows from what we have said in two earlier discus- 
sions, that on the nature of emotion, and that on the organic 
basis of memory and association. 

There is, however, one class of emotions which show more 
clearly the fact that the framework of ideas to which emotion 
attaches is really a product of imitation ; these are the sym- 
pathetic emotions. Sympathy may be called the imitative 
emotion par excellence. My child H. cried out when I 
pinched a bottle-cork in her fifth month, and wept in her 
twenty- second week at the sight of a picture of a man sitting 

1 The balance of this chapter, and the next (Chap. XII.), give en resume 
positions which are developed as topics of independent and practical value in 
the volume, Social and Ethical Interpretations. They are given here under the 
general head of imitation, in order to make passably complete the applica- 
tions of the imitative principle ; in this way also the treatment of the other 
volume is rendered somewhat less theoretical. 



Emotion and Sentiment 317 

weeping, with bowed head in his hands, and his feet held 
fast in stocks. 1 In such cases the presentation is assimilated 
to memory copies of personal suffering, and so calls out the 
motor attitudes of the emotions habitual to experiences of 
pleasure- or pain-giving objects. And the motor discharges, 
each time that they are repeated, become better defined and 
more telling upon consciousness. 

In many cases, however, I think the associative order in the 
sympathetic emotions is the reverse of this. The sight of the 
expression of emotion in another stimulates similar attitudes 
directly in us, and this in turn is felt as the state which usually 
accompanies such a reaction. The two cases of sympathy in my 
child, given above, illustrate the truth of both these accounts. 

The sympathetic emotion, in fact, shows the 'circular' 
form of reaction. The pain-suggesting presentation is itself 
the copy which tends to bring about appropriate attitudes 
in the person having it. And all emotion has the same origin 
as this. The 'expression' of fear, for example, is a rein- 
statement of motor and organic disturbances which were, 
first of all, utility reactions upon a stimulation. But all 
utility reactions upon a stimulation are simply those elements, 
in a larger diffused 'excess' discharge, which were selected 
just because they were fitted to maintain or avoid, as the case 
may be, a particular kind of stimulation. So just in so far 
as the position is valid that all adapted movements are il- 
lustrations of the fundamental vital adaptations represented 
by reaching-out and drawing-in movements, just so far all 
the revivals of them, which break into consciousness as emo- 
tion, are imitative in their origin. 

1 This is, I own, a remarkably early recognition of a pictorial rendering 
of expression ; but I have the date recorded. The picture will be found on 
page 227 of BisselPs Biblical Antiquities. Darwin reported 'sympathy' in 
his child, six months and eleven days old, Mind, II., p. 289. 



318 Conscious Imitation 

There are, further, two or three special illustrations of this 
function of imitation in the genesis of emotion so clear in 
the making, in children, that I shall briefly trace them. First 
let us consider the sense of self, with its remarkable group 
of emotions. 

I have described in an earlier place the kind of responses 
which infants make in the presence of persons, and the main 
facts may be here recalled. We have seen that one of the 
most striking tendencies of the very young child in its re- 
sponses to its environment is the tendency to recognize differ- 
ences of personality. It responds to what I have called ' sug- 
gestions of personality. ' As early as the second month, it 
distinguishes its mother's or nurse's touch in the dark. It 
learns characteristic methods of holding, taking up, patting, 
kissing, etc., and adapts itself, by a marvellous accuracy of 
protestation or acquiescence, to these personal variations. 
Its associations of personality come to be of such importance 
that for a long time its happiness or misery depends upon the 
presence of certain kinds of 'personality- suggestion. ' It is 
quite a different thing from the child's behaviour towards 
things which are not persons. Things get to be, with some 
few exceptions which are involved in the direct gratification 
of appetite, more and more unimportant; things get subor- 
dinated to regular treatment or reaction. But persons 
become constantly more important, as uncertain and dominat- 
ing agents of pleasure and pain. The fact of movement by 
persons and its effects on the infant seem to be the most im- 
portant factor in this peculiar influence ; later the voice gets 
to stand for a person's presence, and at last the face and its 
expressions equal the person, in all his attributes. 

I think this distinction between persons and things, 
between agencies and objects, is the child's very first step 
toward a sense of the qualities which distinguish persons. 



Emotion and Sentiment 319 

The sense of uncertainty or lack of confidence grows stronger 
and stronger in its dealings with persons — an uncertainty 
contingent upon the moods, emotions, nuances of expression, 
and shades of treatment, of the persons around it. A per- 
son stands for a group of experiences quite unstable in its 
prophetic as it is in its historical meaning. This we may, 
for brevity of expression, assuming it to be first in order of 
development, call the ' projective stage' * in the growth of the 
personal consciousness, which is so important an element in 
social emotion. 

Further observation of children shows that the instrument 
of transition from such a 'projective' to a subjective sense of 
personality, is the child's active bodily self, and the method 
of it is the principle of imitation. As a matter of fact, ac- 
commodation by actual muscular imitation does not arise in 
most children until about the seventh month, so utterly or- 
ganic is the child before this, and so great is the impetus of its 
congenital instincts and tendencies. But when the organism 
is ripe, by reason of cerebral development, for the enlargement 
of its active range by new accommodations, then he begins to 
be dissatisfied with 'projects,' with contemplation, and so 
starts on his career of imitation. And of course he imitates 
persons. Persons have become, by all his business with them 
and theirs with him, his interesting objects, the source of his 
weal or woe, his uncertain factors. And further, persons are 
bodies which move, and among these bodies which move, 
which have certain projective attributes, as already described, 
a very peculiar and interesting one is his own body. It 
has connected with it certain intimate features which 
all others lack. Besides the inspection of hand and foot, 

1 See the detailed observations and analysis of these 'personal projects,' 
above, Chap. VI., §§ 3, 6. The use of the word * project ' is justified in the 
earlier connection. 



32Q Conscious Imitation 

by touch and sight, he has experiences in his consciousness 
which are in all cases connected with this body, — strains, 
stresses, resistances, pains, etc., — an inner felt series 
matching the outer presented series. But it is only when 
a new kind of experience arises which we call effort 
— a set opposition to strain, stress, resistance, pain, an ex- 
perience which arises, I think, first as imitative effort — that 
there comes that great line of cleavage in his experience which 
indicates the rise of volition, and which separates off the 
series now first really subjective. Persistent imitation with 
effort is the typical case of explicit volition, and the first 
germinating nucleus of self-hood over against object-hood. 
Situations before accepted simply, are now set forward, aimed 
at, wrought ; and in the fact of aiming, working, the fact of 
agency, which we have found to arise with the child's realiza- 
tion of the possible capriciousness of character, is the nascent 
sense of subject. 1 

The subject sense, then, is an actuating sense. What has 
formerly been 'projective' now becomes 'subjective.' The 
associates of other personal bodies, the attributes which made 
them different from things, are now attached to his own body 
with the further peculiarity of actuation. This we may call 
the subjective stage in the growth of the self-notion. It rapidly 
assimilates to itself all the other elements by which the child's 
own body differs in his experience from other active bodies, — 
the passive inner series of pains, pleasures, strains, etc. The 
self suffers as well as acts. All get set over against lifeless 
things, and against other bodies which act, indeed, but whose 

1 It is in exhibition of this new sense of agency, or power over its own 
actions, with their suggestiveness to others, that the child's first conscious 
'lies' seem to appear; and these lies are generally of great value as being 
the means of bringing out, in its earliest forms, the originality and invention 
of the boy or girl. Cases are given in the chapter on 'Invention' in Social 
and Ethical Interpretations. 



Emotion and Sentiment 321 

actions do not contribute to his own sense of actuation or of 
suffering. 

Again, it is easy to see what now happens. The child's 
subject sense goes out by a kind of return dialectic, which 
is really simply a second case of assimilation, to illuminate 
these other persons. The project of the earlier period is now 
lighted up, claimed, clothed on with the raiment of self -hood, 
by analogy with the subjective. The projective becomes 
ejective; that is, other people's bodies, says the child to 
himself, have experiences in them such as mine has. They 
are also nie's: let them be assimilated to my me copy. 
This is the third stage; the ejective, or 'social' self, is 
born. 1 

The ego and the alter are thus born together. Both are 
crude and unreflective, largely organic, an aggregate of sensa- 
tions, prime among which are efforts, pushes, strains, physi- 
cal pleasures and pains. And the two get purified and 
clarified together by this twofold reaction between project and 
subject, and between subject and eject. My sense of myself 
grows by imitation of you, and my sense of yourself grows in 
terms of my sense of myself. Both ego and alter are thus 
essentially social; each is a socius, and each is an imitative 
creation. So for a long time the child's sense of self includes 
too much. The circumference of the notion is too wide. 
It includes the infant's mother, and little brother, and nurse, 
in a literal sense ; for they are what he thinks of and aims to 
act like, by imitating, when he thinks of himself. To be 
separated from his mother is to lose a part of himself, as 
much so as to be separated from a hand or foot. And he 
is dependent for his growth directly upon these sugges- 

1 1 think an adequate apprehension of the distinctions conveyed by the 
three words 'projective,' 'subjective,' and 'ejective,' would do much to banish 
the popular ' psychologist 's fallacy.' 



322 Conscious Imitation 

tions which come in for imitation from his personal 
milieu} 

It will be seen by readers of R. Avenarius, 2 that the two 
stages of this development correspond to the two stages in 
his process of Intro jection, whereby the 'hypothetical' (per- 
sonal-organic) element of the naturlichen Weltbegrijf is se- 
cured. Avenarius finds, from analytical and anthropological 
points of view, a process of 'attribution,' reading-in (Einle- 
gung), by which a consciousness comes to interpret certain 
peculiarities attaching to those items in its experience which 
represent organisms and afterwards persons. The second 
stage is that whereby these peculiarities get carried back and 
attached to its own organism (Selbsteinlegung), and recognized 
as 'subjective' (sensations, perceptions, thoughts), in both 
organisms, over against the regular 'objective' elements con- 
tained in the rest of the world experience. 

This general doctrine of Avenarius finds better justifica- 
tion than he gives it, I think, from the genetic sphere, into 
which he does not go. The two phenomena, 'personality- 
suggestion' and 'imitation,' supply just the support for a 
revised doctrine of ' Intro jection.' First comes what I have 
called, in what precedes, the 'projective' stage of the self- 
notion. It is the stage in which the infant gets 'personality- 
suggestions.' It is simply the infant's way of getting 'more 
copy ' of a peculiar kind from the personal element in its ob- 
jective surroundings. The second stage is secured by imita- 

1 Professor Josiah Royce has expressed, in an article in the Philosophical 
Review, November, 1894, a view of the growth of the self -notion in the child's 
consciousness in close agreement, in many points, with this ; and I take pleas- 
ure in referring to his development as similar to the detailed statement 
of my other volume. My present text appeared, in much the same words as 
now, in Mind for January, 1894. Royce's paper is now to be found in his 
volume, Studies in Good and Evil. 

2 Kritik der reinen Erjahrung, and also Der tnenschliche Weltbegrifi. 



Emotion and Sentiment 323 

tion. The child reproduces the copy thus obtained, consist- 
ing of the physical signs, and, through them, of the mental 
accompaniments. Here the imitation of emotional expres- 
sions has its great influence. By this reproduction it 'in- 
terprets' its projects as subjective, in itself, and then refers 
them back to the 'other person' again, with all the gain of 
this interpretation. Avenarius, as far as I have been able to 
discover, has no means of passing from the first to the second 
stage, from project to subject. He speaks 1 of a certain confu- 
sion (Verwechselung) of the projective experience (T-Er- 
fahrung) with the remaining personal elements in conscious- 
ness (M-Erfahrung) : but what the true leading-thread into 
this 'confusion' and out of it is, he does not note. This is 
just what I claim it is the function of imitation to do ; it sup- 
plies the bridge with two reaches. It enables me — the 
child — to pass from my experience of what you are, to an 
interpretation of what I am ; and then from this fuller sense 
of what I am, back to a fuller knowledge of what you are. 2 

1 Der menschliche Weltbegriff, § 51, p. 30, and § 95, p. 49. 

2 In the use of the two facts, 'personality-suggestion' and 'imitation,' 
therefore, my development is unindebted to Avenarius, who writes from the 
point of view of race history and criticism. I do not adopt the word ' intro- 
jection,' since it covers too much. My word 'project' signifies the child's 
sense of others' personality before it has a sense of its own. The rest pro- 
ceeds by imitation. This distinction of method raises a further question 
which, as I have already said (Chap. I.), should be carefully discussed in all 
problems for which a genetic solution is sought, i.e. how far the genetic pro- 
cess itself in the individual's growth has become a matter of race habit or 
instinct. That is, granted a process of origin correctly depicted, to what 
extent must we say that each new individual of the race passes through it in 
all its details? The origin of impulse and instinct illustrate the effects of 
selection in abbreviating these processes and starting the individual from 
points of higher vantage. I am not prepared to say that an isolated child, for 
example, might not get a crude self-notion (as he might learn to speak 
somehow) if deprived of all social suggestions ; but that fact would be subject 
to explanation as part of the ability to learn which is the outcome, on a large 
scale, of the very genetic process which it appears to supersede. 



324 Conscious Imitation 

Further, this process of taking in elements from the social 
world by imitation and giving them out again by a reverse 
process of invention (for such the sequel proves invention to 
be : the modified way in which I put things together in reading 
the elements which I get from nature and other men, back into 
nature and other men again) — this process never stops. We 
never outgrow imitation, nor our social obligation to it. Our 
sense of self is constantly growing richer and fuller as we 
understand others better, — as we get into social co-operation 
with them, — and our understanding of them is in turn en- 
riched by the additions which our own private experience 
makes to the lessons which we learn from them. These and 
other aspects of social emotion, which come to mind in con- 
nection with this suggestive topic, are reserved. 1 

I think some light falls on the growth of ethical feeling, 
also, from the psychology of imitation, although I must again 
disclaim adequacy of treatment. The two principles, habit 
and imitative accommodation, seem to get application on this 
higher plane: the plane which is the theatre of the rise of 
moral sentiment. Moral sentiment arises evidently around 
acts and attitudes of will. It is accordingly to be expected 
that the account of the genesis of volition will throw some 
light upon the conditions of the rise of conscience. So if it 
be true that present character is the deposit of all former 
reactions of whatever kind, and that what we call will is a 
general term for our concrete acts of volition, and further that 
volition represents a co-ordination of tendencies, then ac- 
cording as these tendencies are suggestions from other persons, 
on the one hand, and represent partial expressions of one's 
own personal character, on the other hand, there arises a 
division within that sense of voluntary agency which is the 
germ of the notion of self. Your suggestion to me may con- 
1 See, however, Chap. XII. Cf. the later work. 



Emotion and Sentiment 325 

flict with my desire ; my desire may conflict with my own pres- 
ent sympathy. Self meets self, so to speak. The self of ac- 
commodation, imitation, the self that learns, collides with the 
self of habit, of character, the self that seeks to dominate. 
It is no longer a matter of simple habit versus simple sugges- 
tion, as is the case in infancy, before the self gets the degree 
of complexity which constitutes it a voluntary agent, as a 
later chapter shows. It is now that form of habit which is 
personal agency, coming into conflict with that form of sug- 
gestion which is also personal to me as representing my social 
self. Your example is powerful to me intrinsically; not 
because it is abstractly good or evil, but because it represents 
a part of myself, inasmuch as I have become what I am in part 
through my sympathy with you and imitation of you. So your 
injunctions to me bring out a difference of motor attitude 
between what is socially responsive in me, in a sense pub- 
lic, and that which is relatively me alone, my private 
self. 

When I come to a new moral situation, therefore, my state 
is this, in each case — and we shall see as we go on that it is 
yet more: I am in a condition of relative equilibrium, or 
balance of two factors, my personal or habitual self, and my 
social suggestive self. Your wife announces to you that you 
are to go to a reception given by Mr. A. 'Hang Mr. A !' is 
your first reply — that of your habitual private self. But 
your wife says, "Some one of the family should be there, and 
besides I want to go." This is an appeal to your family, 
public, social self in its broad sense, supplemented by an 
appeal to your sympathetic, narrower, conjugal self. The 
new decision which you make tends to destroy this equilib- 
rium by reinforcing your 'copy' and its influence in your 
character, on one side or the other, and so to lead you out for 
further habit or for new social adaptations. 



326 Conscious Imitation 

And now on this basis comes a new mental movement 
which seems to me to involve a further development of the 
imitative motif — a development which substitutes warmth 
and life for the horrible coldness and death of that view 
which identifies voluntary morality with submission to a 
'word of command.' The child, it is true, very soon comes 
across that most impressive thing in its moral environment 
which we call authority; and acquires that most responsive 
thing in our moral equipment which we call obedience. He 
acquires obedience in one of two ways, or both : by suggestion, 
or by reward and punishment. The way of suggestion is the 
higher; because it proceeds by gradual lessons in accom- 
modation, until the habit of regularity in conduct is acquired, 
in opposition to the capriciousness of his own reactions. It is 
also the better way because it sets before the child in an object 
lesson an example of that stability and lawfulness which it is 
the end of obedience to foster. Yet the way of punishment 
is good and necessary. Punishment is nature's way ; she in- 
flicts the punishment first, and afterwards nurses the insight 
by which the punishment comes to be understood. A child's 
capricious movement may bring a pain which represents all 
the organic growth of the race; and so when we punish a 
child's capricious conduct, we are letting fall upon him the 
pain which represents all the social and ethical growth of the 
race. But by whatever method, — suggestion or punish- 
ment, — the object is the same : to preserve the child, until 
he learns from his own habit the insight which is nec- 
essary to his own salvation through intelligent submis- 
sion. 

But whether obedience comes by suggestion or by pun- 
ishment, it has this genetic value: it leads to another re- 
finement in the sense of self, at first 'projective,' then sub- 
jective. The child finds himself stimulated constantly to 



Emotion and Sentiment 327 

deny his impulses, his desires, even his irregular sympathies, 
by conforming to the will of another. This other represents 
a regular, systematic, unflinching, but reasonable personality 
— still a person, but a very different person from the child's 
own. In the analysis of 'personality suggestion,' we found 
this stage of the child's apprehension of persons — his sense 
of the regularity of personal character in the midst of the 
capriciousness that before this stood out in contrast to the 
regularity of mechanical movement in things. There are 
extremes of indulgence, the child learns, which even the grand- 
mother does not permit ; there are extremes of severity from 
which even the cruel father draws back. Here, in this dawn- 
ing sense of the larger limits which set barriers to personal 
freedom, is the ' copy ' forming, which is his personal authority 
or law. It is 'projective,' because he cannot understand it, 
cannot anticipate it, cannot find it in himself. And it is only 
by imitation that he is to reproduce it, and so arrive at a know- 
ledge of what he is to understand it to be. So it is a 'copy 
for imitation.' It is its aim, — so may the child say to him- 
self, — and should be mine, — if I am awake to it, — to have 
me obey it, act like it, think like it, be like it in all respects. 
It is not I, but I am to become it. Here is my ideal self, my 
final pattern, my 'ought' set before me. My parents and 
teachers are good because, with all their differences from one 
another, they yet seem to be alike in their acquiescence to this 
law. Only in so far as I get into the habit of being and doing 
like them in reference to it, get my character moulded into 
conformity with it, only so far am I good, And so, like all 
other imitative functions, it teaches its lesson only by stimu- 
lating to action. I must succeed in doing — he finds out, as 
he grows older and begins to reflect upon right and wrong — 
if I would understand. But as I thus progress in doing, I 
forever find new patterns set for me ; and so my ethical insight 



328 Conscious Imitation 

must always find its profoundest expression in that yearn- 
ing which anticipates, but does not overtake, the ideal. 1 

My sense of moral ideal, therefore, is my sense of a possible 
perfect, regular will, taken over in me y in which the personal 
and the social self — my habits and my social calls — are 
brought completely into harmony ; the sense of obligation in 
me, in each case, is a sense of lack of harmony — a sense of the 
actual discrepancies between my various concrete thoughts of 
self. To pursue my commonplace illustration, your wife adds 
to the reasons for your attending the reception of Mr. A., this 
one: 'And besides, you ought to go out more.' This is the 
profoundest reason of all ; not because it has in it the word 
'ought,' merely, but because it makes appeal to the ideal 
self, before the law of which all the earlier claims have their 
lesser or greater value. 

And then, once more, the thought of this ideal self, made 
ejective, as it must be by the dialectic of this germinat- 
ing social sense, put out of and beyond me — this is em- 
bodied in the moral sanctions of society, and finally in 
God. 2 

1 A further important aid to the child in this development is his observa- 
tion of the way that other people behave to one another in his presence. 

On the nature of 'ideals' and the rise of conceptual emotion, in which, in 
my view, the sense of ideals, as being ideal, really consists, see my Handbook 
of Psychology, Vol. II., Chap. IX., carried further in Thought and Things, 
Vol. I., Chap. X., § 8. 

2 I can only mention here Hegel's striking treatment of the genetic develop- 
ment of the ethical and religious sense (Philosophy of Mind, § II.), 
altogether the best ever written, in my opinion, and Adam Smith's remark- 
able doctrine of the social element in the moral sense, covered by the term 
'sympathy ' (in Theory of the Moral Sentiments). Many facts give support to 
Hegel's intuitions. On the distinctively social function of imitation, Tarde 
and Sighele both dwell in the works named, the latter endeavouring to lay 
the foundations of a science of ' collective psychology.' A similar task is set 
in my later volume. As to religious emotion, it is astonishing enough that 
the law of imitation should reach so far as to touch those mysterious ' ideas 



Emotion and Sentiment 329 

The value of the ejective sense of moral self is seen in 
the great sensitiveness we have to the supposed opinions 
of others about our conduct. It is an essential and constant 
ingredient. From the account given of the rise of the sense 
of obligation, we should expect the two very subtle aspects of 
this sensitiveness which are actually present. First, in 
general, our dread and fear before another's fancied opinion 
is in direct proportion to our own sense of self-condemnation. 
Consciousness is clear on this point. It must be so if it is true 
that our sense of self-condemnation is of social origin, i.e. 
arises from our imitative response to the well- sanctioned 
opinions and commands of others. But second, the intel- 
ligent observation of the opinions of others, and the suffering 
of the penalties of social law, react back constantly to purify 
and elevate the standard which one sets himself, just as they 
originally stimulated its rise. There is, therefore, a constant 
progress through the action and reaction of society upon the 
individual and the individual upon society. And religious 
sanctions get much of their force, it seems to me, in just this 
same way. 

Josiah Royce x distinguishes between the two earlier 
phases of self which have been pointed out, but does not de- 
velop the third. Yet he indicates clearly and with emphasis 
the twofold element of conflict under which the moral sense 
develops. The ordinary accounts on the natural history side, 
from Darwin 2 to the present, simply describe a conflict in 
consciousness between sympathy and selfishness. This fails 
to do justice to the 'law' element, which moralists justly 
emphasize, in the genesis of morality. It gives no standard 

of reason' which have so long baffled metaphysics. But — why should it 
not ? Is not the cry ' Anthropomorphism ! ' as old as Xenophanes ? And 
is it not a plea for or against imitation? 

1 International Journal of Ethics, July, 1893, p. 430. 

2 Descent of Man, Part I., Chap. III. 



330 Conscious Imitation 

of values, no scale for the estimation of the worths of the im- 
pulses which represent temporary and changing selves. I 
should go farther than Royce does in emphasizing this element, 
believing as I do that there is no full sense of oughtness until 
the child gets the basis of a habit \ which not only calls upon 
him to deny his private selfishness in favour of sympathy, but 
also his private sympathies in favour of reasonable regularity 
learned through submission. The opposition, that is, be- 
tween my regular personal ideal and all else, — whether it be 
the regularity of my selfish habit or the irregularity of my 
generous responses, — this is the essential condition of the 
rise of obligation. And it is in so far as this ought-feeling 
goes out beyond the copy elements drawn from actual in- 
stances of action, and anticipates better or more ideal action, 
that the antithesis between the 'ought' and the 'is' gets psy- 
chological justification. 

The question, finally, whether obedience is a case of im- 
itation, 1 is a matter of words. It is imitation, in the large 
sense of the term. As far as the copy set in the 'word of 
command' is reproduced, the reaction is imitative. A child 
cannot obey a command to do what he does not know how to 
do. The circumstances of his doing it, however, the forcible 
presentation of the copy by another person, this seems only 
to add additional elements to the copy itself, not to be in any 
sense an interference, or a prevention of the due operation of 
imitation. The child has in view, when he obeys, not only 
the thing he is to do, but the circumstances — the conse- 
quences, the punishment, the reward — and these also he 
seeks to reproduce or to avoid. On the other hand, it may 
well be asked whether all of our voluntary imitations and 
actions generally, are not, in a sense, cases of obedience ; for 

1 See discussion by Tarde, loc. cit., and Paulhan, Revue Philosophique, 
August, 1890, p. 179 ; alsoTonnies, Philosophische Monatshefte, 1893, p. 308. 



Emotion and Sentiment 331 

it is only when an idea gets some suggestive force, or sanctions, 
or social setting, that it is influential in bringing us out for 
its reproduction. Of course this is only further play on 
definitions; but it serves to indicate the real elements in 
the situation. When Tonnies says that obedience comes 
first and imitation afterwards, he refers to voluntary imita- 
tion of a particular action which the child has already learned 
to do. But the whole theory of his learning must go before, 
and it could hardly be said that the child learned to do a thing 
at first simply by being commanded to do it. 



CHAPTER XII 

Conscious Imitation (concluded) 

§ i. Classification 

It is possible, on the basis of the preceding developments, 
to lay out a scheme of notions and terms to govern the dis- 
cussion of the whole matter of imitation. This has been the 
'loose joint' in many discussions; the utter lack of any well- 
defined limits set to the phenomena in question. Tarde 
practically claims all cases of organic or social resemblance 
as instances of imitation, overlooking the truth, as one of his 
critics takes pains to point out, that two things which resemble 
each other may be common effects of the same cause ! Others 
are disposed to consider the voluntary imitation of an action 
as the only legitimate case of imitation. This, we have seen, 
has given rise to great confusion among psychologists. We 
have reason to think that volition requires a finely complex 
system of copy elements, whose very presence can be ac- 
counted for only on the basis of earlier organic, or certainly 
ideo-motor, imitations. Further, it is the lower, less voli- 
tional types of mind that simple imitation characterizes, the 
undeveloped child, the parrot, the idiot, the hypnotic, the 
hysterical. If again we say, with yet others, that imitation 
always involves a presentation or image of the situation or 
object imitated, — a position very near the popular use of the 
term, — then we have great difficulty in accounting for the 
absorption and reproduction of subconscious, vaguely present 

332 



Classification 333 

stimulations; as, for example, the acquisition of facial ex- 
pression, the contagion of emotion, the growth of style in dress 
and institutions — what may be called the influence of the 
'psychic atmosphere.' 

I think we have found reason from the analysis above, to 
hold that our provisional definition of imitation is just; 
an imitative reaction is one which tends normally to main- 
tain or repeat its own stimulating process. This is what we 
find the nervous and muscular mechanism suited to, and this 
is what we find the organism doing in a progressive way in all 
the types of function which we have passed in review. If this 
is too broad a definition, then what we have traced must be 
given some other name, and imitation applied to any more 
restricted function that can be clearly and finally marked out. 
But let us give no rein to the fanciful and strained analogies 
which have exercised the minds of certain writers on im- 
itation. 

Adhering, then, to the definition which makes of imitation 
a 'circular ' process, we may point out its various 'kinds/ ac- 
cording to the degree in which a reaction of the general type 
has, by complication, abbreviation, substitution, inhibition, 
or what not, departed in the development of consciousness 
from its typical simplicity. We find, in fact, three great in- 
stances of function, all of which conform to the imitative type. 
Two of these have already been put in evidence in detail; 
the third I am going on to characterize briefly in the following 
section under the phrase 'plastic imitation.' 

First : the organic reaction which tends to maintain, repeat, 
reproduce, its own stimulation, be it simple contractility, 
muscular contraction, or selected reactions which have be- 
come habitual. This may be called biological or organic 
imitation. Under this head fall all cases lower down than the 
conscious picturing of copies ; lower down in the sense of not 



334 Conscious Imitation 

involving, and never having involved, for their execution, a 
conscious sensory or intellectual suggesting stimulus, with the 
possibility of its revival as a memory. On the nervous side, 
such imitations may be called subcortical; and in view of 
another class mentioned below, they may be further qualified 
as primarily subcortical. 

These 'biological' imitations are evidently first in order 
of development, and represent" the gains or accommoda- k 
tions of the organism made independently of the conscious 
picturing of stimulations and adaptation to them. They serve 
for the accumulation of material for conscious and voluntary 
actions. In the young of the animals, their scope is very lim- 
ited, because of the complete instinctive equipment which 
young animals bring into the world; but in human infants 
they play an important part, as the means of the gradual re- 
duction to order and utility of the diffused motor discharges of 
the new-born. I have noted its presence under the phrase 
'physiological' suggestion 1 in another place. It is under this 
head that the so-called 'selective' function of the nervous 
system finds its first illustration. 

Second : we pass to psychological, conscious, or cortical 
imitations. The criterion of imitation — the presence of 
a copy to be aimed at — is here fulfilled in the form of con- 
scious presentations and images. The copy becomes con- 
sciously available in two ways : first, as presentation, which 
the imitative reaction seeks to continue or reproduce (as 
the imitation of words heard, movements seen, etc.); and 
second, as memory. In this latter case there arises com- 
plexity in the 'copy system,' with desire, in which there is 
consciousness of the imitative tendency as respects an agree- 
able memory copy ; and with the persistence of such a copy, 
and its partial repression by other elements of memory, comes 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 2. 



Plastic Imitation 335 

volition. We find, accordingly, two kinds of psychological or 
cortical imitation, which I have called respectively ' simple ' and 
' persistent ' imitation. Simple imitation is the sensori-motor 
or ideo-motor suggestion which tends to keep itself going by 
reinstating its own stimulation ; and persistent imitation is the 
'try-try-again,' experience of early volition, to be taken up in 
more detail below. 1 

Third : a great class of facts which we may well designate 
by the term l plastic' or 'secondarily subcortical' imitations, 
to which more particular attention may now be given. 

§ 2. Plastic Imitation 

This phrase is used to cover all the cases of reaction or 
attitude, toward the doings, customs, opinions of others, 
which once represented more or less conscious adaptations 
either in race or in personal history, but which have become 
what is ordinarily called 'secondary automatic' and subcon- 
scious. With them are all the less well-defined kinds of 
response which we make to the actions, suggestions, etc., of 
others, simply from the habit we are in, by heredity and ex- 
perience, or conforming to social 'copy.' Plastic imitation 
represents the general fact of that normal suggestibility which 
is, as regards personal rapport, the very soul of our social 
relationships with one another. 

These cases come up for detailed discussion in the later 
volume. They serve to put in evidence the foundation facts 
of a possible psychology of masses, crowds, organized bodies 
generally. They may be readily explained by one or both 
of two principles — both really one, that of Habit. The 
principle of 'lapsed links,' already explained, applies to cases 
of conventional conformity, or custom, which is but an 

1 Cf. Chap. XIII. 



336 Conscious Imitation 

expression for abbreviated processes of social imitation. This 
accounts for the influence of the old, the venerated, the 
antique, upon mankind. The other principle is the applica- 
tion of habit itself to imitation, whereby absorption by imita- 
tion has become the great means, the first resort of conscious- 
ness, in the presence of new kinds of experience. We have 
become used to getting new accommodations, fine outlets for 
action and avenues of happiness, by taking up new thoughts, 
beliefs, fashions, etc. This accounts for the tyranny of 
novelty in all social affairs. So in these two principles, 
both exhibitions of the one law of imitation, we reach the 
two great forces of social life, conservatism and liberalism. 
So we find under this heading such fundamental facts as the 
social phenomena of contagion, fashion, mob-law, which 
Tarde and Sighele so well emphasize, the imitation of facial 
and emotional expression, moral influence, organic sym- 
pathy, personal rapport, etc., all matters set aside for later 
treatment. The term 'plastic' serves to point out the rather 
helpless condition of the person who imitates, and so inter- 
prets in his own action the more intangible influences of his 
estate in life. 

The general character of plastic imitation may be made 
clearer if we give attention to some of its more obscure in- 
stances, and assign them places in the general scheme of 
development. 

The social instances noticed at length by Tarde, and 
summarized under so-called 'laws,' are easily reduced to the 
more general principles now stated. Tarde enunciated a 
law based on the fact that people imitate one another in 
thoughts and opinions before they do so in dress and customs, 
his inference being that ' imitation proceeds from the internal 
to the external.' So far as this is true it is only partially 
imitation. Thoughts and opinions are imitated because they 



Plastic Imitation 337 

are most important, and most difficult to maintain for one- 
self. And it is only a result of similar thought that .action 
should be similar, without in all cases resorting to imitation 
to account for this last similarity. But the so-called facts 
are not true. The relatively trivial and external things are 
most liable to be seized upon. A child imitates persons, 
and what he copies most largely are the personal points of 
evidence, so to speak; the boldest, most external manifesta- 
tions, the things that he with his capacity is most likely to see, 
not the inner essential mental things. It is only as he grows 
to make a conscious distinction between thought and action 
that he gets to giving the former a higher valuation. And 
so it is in the different strata of society. The relative force 
of convention, imitation of externals, worship of custom, 
seems to have an inverse relation to the degree of develop- 
ment of a people. 

Again, Tarde's laws relative to imitation mode and imita- 
tion coutume — the former having in its eye the new, fashion- 
able, popular, the fad ; the latter, the old, venerable, custom- 
ary — are so clearly partial statements of the principles of 
accommodation and habit, as they get application in the 
broader genetic ways already briefly pointed out, that it is 
not necessary to dwell further upon them. 1 

The phenomena of hypnotism illustrate most strikingly the 
reality of this kind of imitation at a certain stage of mental 
life. Delbceuf makes it probable 2 that the characteristic 
peculiarities of the 'stages' of the Paris school are due to 
this influence ; and the wider question may well be opened, 
whether suggestion generally, as understood in hypnotic 

1 Tarde's other principle, that 'inferiors imitate superiors,' is clearly a 
corollary from the view that the progressive sense of personality arises through 
social suggestion. 

2 Revue Philosophique, XXII., pp. 146 ff. 



338 Conscious Imitation 

work, might not be better expressed by some formula which 
recognizes the fundamental sameness of all reactions — nor- 
mal, pathological, hypnotic, degenerative — which exhibit the 
form of stimulus-repeating or 'circular' process characteristic 
of simple imitation. In normal, personal, and social sugges- 
tion the copy elements are, in part, unrecognized ; and their 
reactions are subject to inhibition and blocking-off by the 
various voluntary and complicated tendencies which have 
the floor. In sleep, on the other hand, the copy elements 
are largely spontaneous images, thrown up by the play of 
association, or stimulated by outside trivialities, and all so 
weak that while action follows in the dream persons, it does 
not generally follow in the dreamer's own muscles. But in 
hypnotic somnambulism, the copy elements are from the 
outside, thrown in ; the inner fountains are blocked ; action 
tends to follow upon idea, whatever it is. Even the idea of 
no action is acted out by the lethargic, and the idea of fixed 
self-sustaining action by the cataleptic. 1 

Further, in certain cases of madness (folie a deux, etc.) the 
patient responds to the copy which has been learned from a 
single person only, and which has aided in the production 
of the disease. 2 In all these cases, the peculiar character of 
which is the performance, under conditions commonly called 
those of aboulia, 3 of reactions which require the muscular 

1 It may be well to quote Janet's summary of his determinations of the 
characteristic features of general catalepsy, all of which indicate a purely 
imitative condition of consciousness, Aut. Psych., p. 55: "The different phe- 
nomena which we have described are these ; i.e. the continuation of an atti- 
tude or a movement, the repetition of movements which have been seen and 
of sounds which have been heard, the harmonious association of the members 
and of their movements." Cf. Janet on hysteria, Arch, de Neurologie, June, 
July, 1893. 

2 Cf. Falret, J&tudes cliniques sur les maladies mentales et nerveuses, p. 547. 

3 This would involve, as I have intimated on an earlier page, a doctrine 
which holds that in the hypnotic state, there is inhibition of the cortical asso- 



How to Observe Children s Imitations 339 

co-ordinations usually employed by voluntary action, we 
have illustrations of ' plastic ' imitation. On the pathological 
side, we find, in aphasic patients who cannot write or speak 
spontaneously, but who still can copy handwriting and speak 
after another, cases which illustrate the same kind of defect, 
yet in which the defect is not general, but rather confined to 
a particular group of reactions, by reason of a circumscribed 
lesion. 

In this form of imitative suggestion, it is now clear, we 
have a second kind of subcortical reaction. It is ' secondarily 
subcortical/ in contrast with the organic or 'primarily sub- 
cortical' imitations. When looked at from the point of view 
of race history, it gives us further reason for finding in imi- 
tation a native impulse. 1 

§ 3. How to Observe Children's Imitations 2 

There are one or two considerations of such practical im- 
portance to all those who wish to observe cases of imitation 
by children, that I venture to throw them together, only 

dative or synthetic function, but not of the simple cortical sense function. 
Cf. Gurney's remarks on Heidenhain's explanation of 'hypnotic mimicry,' 
in Mind, 1884, p. 493. 

1 In the earlier publication of some of the positions of this chapter {Mind, 
January, 1894, p. 52), I argued against Bain's view, in his Senses and Intellect, 
pp. 413 ff. (3d ed.), of imitation as in all cases acquired. In his fourth 
edition, while repeating his former arguments, he nevertheless so weakens 
them by a supplementary note that I find his concessions practically bringing 
him into accord with our own views. The note is as follows {loc. cit., p. 441) : 
"As in other connections, I have to qualify the foregoing explanation by 
admitting the possibility and the fact of hereditary transmission in at least 
preparing the way or giving facilities for the operation now described. . . . 
The inheritance of tendencies favouring acquisition may decisively contribute 
to the advancement of our early powers of imitation. The term 'instinct' 
would thus have a certain fitness. ..." 

2 See the Century Magazine for December, 1894, and cf. Royce's article 
on 'The Imitative Functions' in the same magazine for May, 1894. 



340 Conscious Imitation 

saying by way of introduction that they all follow from the 
general statement that nothing less than the growth of per- 
sonality is at stake in the method and matter of its imita- 
tions; for the 'self is largely the form or process in which 
the personal influences surrounding the child take on their 
new individuality. 

i. No observations are of much importance which are not 
accompanied by a detailed statement of the personal in- 
fluences which have affected the child. This is the more 
important since the child sees few persons, and sees them 
constantly. It is not only likely — it is inevitable — that he 
make up his personality, under limitations of heredity, by 
imitation, out of the 'copy' set in the actions, temper, emo- 
tions, of the persons who build around him the social en- 
closure of his childhood. It is only necessary to watch a 
two-year-old closely to see what members of the family are 
giving him his personal 'copy' — to find out whether he sees 
his mother constantly and his father seldom; whether he 
plays much with other children, and what their dispositions 
are, to a degree ; whether he is growing to be a person of 
subjugation, equality, or tyranny ; whether he is assimilating 
the elements of some low unorganized social content from 
his foreign nurse. For, to use Leibnitz's term, the boy or 
girl is a social 'monad/ a little world, which reflects the whole 
system of influences coming to stir its sensibility. And just 
in so far as his sensibilities are stirred, he imitates, and forms 
habits of imitating ; and habits ? — they are character ! 

2. A point akin to the first is this: every observation 
should describe with great accuracy the child's relation to 
other children. Has he brothers or sisters ; how many of 
each, and of what age? Does he sleep in the same bed or 
room with them? Do they play much with one another 
alone ? The reason is very evident. An only child has only 



How to Observe Children s Imitations 341 

adult 'copy/ He cannot interpret his father's actions, or 
his mother's, oftentimes. He imitates very blindly. He 
lacks the more childish example of a brother or sister near 
himself in age. And this difference is of very great impor- 
tance to his development. He lacks the stimulus, for ex- 
ample, of games, in which personification is a direct tutor to 
self-hood, as is taught elsewhere. 1 And while he becomes 
precocious in some lines of instruction, he fails in wealth of 
imagination, in variety of fancy. The dramatic, in his sense 
of social situations, is largely hidden. It is a very great mis- 
take to isolate children. One alone is perhaps the worse, 
but two alone are subject to the other element of social 
danger which I may mention next. 

3. Observers should report with especial care all cases of 
unusually close relationship between children in youth, such 
as childish favouritism, 'platonic friendships,' 'chumming,' 
in school or home, etc. We have in these facts — and there 
is a very great variety of them — an exaggeration of the 
social or imitative tendency, a narrowing down of the per- 
sonal suggestive sensibility to a peculiar line of well-formed 
influences. It has been little studied by writers either on 
the genesis of social emotion or on the practice of education. 
To be sure, teachers are alive to the pros and cons of allow- 
ing children and students to room together; but it is with 
a view to the possibility of direct immoral or unwholesome 
contagion. This danger is certainly real; but we, as psy- 
chological observers, and above all as teachers and leaders, 
of our children, must go even deeper than that. Consider, 
for example, the possible influence of a school chum and 
room-mate upon a girl in her teens ; for this is only an evident 
case of what all children thus isolated are subject to. A 
sensitive nature, a girl whose very life is a branch of a social 

1 See Thought and, Things, Vol. L, Chap. VI., §§ 6 ff. 



34 2 Conscious Imitation 

tree, is placed in a new environment, to engraft upon the 
members of her mutilated self — her very personality ; it is 
nothing less than that — utterly new channels of supply. 
The only safety possible, the only way to conserve the lessons 
of her past, apart from the veriest chance, and to add to the 
structure of her present character, lies in securing for her the 
greatest possible variety of social influences. Instead of this, 
she meets, eats, walks, talks, lies down at night, and rises in 
the morning, with one other person, a 'copy' set before her, 
as immature in all likelihood as herself, or, if not so, yet a 
single personality, put there to wrap around her growing 
self the confining cords of unassimilated and foreign habit. 
Above all things, fathers, mothers, teachers, elders, give the 
children room ! They need all that they can get, and their 
personalities will grow to fill it. Give them plenty of com- 
panions, fill their lives with variety, — variety is the soul of 
originality, and its only source of supply. The ethical life 
itself, the boy's, the girl's, conscience, is born in the stress of 
the conflicts of suggestion, born right out of his imitative 
hesitations; and just this is the analogy which he must 
assimilate and depend upon in his own conflicts for self- 
control and social continence. So impressively true is this 
from the human point of view, that in my opinion — formed, 
it is true, from the very few data accessible on such points, 
still a positive opinion — children should never be allowed, 
after infancy, to room regularly together ; special friendships 
of a close exclusive kind should be discouraged or broken up, 
except when under the immediate eye of the wise parent or 
guardian ; and even when allowed, these relationships should, 
in all cases, be used to entrain the sympathetic and moral 
sentiments into a wider field of social exercise. 

4. The remainder of this section must be devoted to the 
further emphasis of the need of close observation of chil- 



How to Observe Children s Imitations 343 

dren's games, especially those which may be best described 
as 'society games.' All those who have given even casual 
observation to the doings of the nursery have been impressed 
with the extraordinary fertility of the child mind, from the 
second year onward, in imagining and plotting social and 
dramatic situations. It has not been so evident, however, 
to these casual observers, nor to many really more skilled, 
that they were observing in these fancy-plays the putting to- 
gether anew of fragments, or larger pieces, of their own 
mental history. But here, in these games, we see the actual 
use which our children make of the personal 'copy' material 
which they have got from you and me. If a man study these 
games patiently in his own children, and analyze them out, 
he gradually sees emerge from the child's inner consciousness 
its picture of the boy's own father, whom he aspires to be 
like, and whose actions he seeks to generalize and apply 
anew. The picture is poor, for the child takes only what he 
is sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele patheti- 
cally notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster 
divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and 
home-coming point of it, that he takes more of the bad in 
us for reproduction than of the good. But be this as it 
may, what we give him is all he gets. Heredity does not 
stop with birth ; it is then only beginning. And the pity of 
it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of the 
fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem the 
new-forming personality from the heritage of past common- 
ness or impurity, is simply left to take its course for the 
further establishing and confirmation of it. Was there ever 
a group of school children who did not leave the real school 
to make a play school, erecting a throne for one of their 
number to sit on and 'take off' the teacher? Was there ever 
a child who did not play 'church,' and force her father if 



344 Conscious Imitation 

possible into the pulpit? Were there ever children who did 
not 'buy' things from fancied stalls in every corner of the 
nursery, when they had once seen an elder drive a trade in 
the market ? The point is this : the child's personality grows ; 
growth is always by action ; he clothes upon himself the scenes 
of his life and acts them out; so he grows in what he is, 
what he understands, and what he is able to perform. 

In order to be of direct service to observers of games of this 
character, I shall now give a short account of an observa- 
tion of the kind made a few weeks ago — one of the simplest 
of many actual situations which my two little girls, Helen and 
Elizabeth, have acted out together. It is a very common- 
place case, a game, the elements of which are evident in 
their origin ; but I choose this rather than one more complex, 
since observers are usually not psychologists, and they find 
the elementary the more instructive. 

On May 2, I was sitting on the porch alone with the chil- 
dren — the two mentioned above, aged respectively four and 
a half and two and a half years. Helen, the elder, told Eliza- 
beth that she was her little baby; that is, Helen became 
'mama,' and Elizabeth 'baby.' The younger responded by 
calling her sister 'mama,' and the play began. 

"You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time to get up," 
said mama. Baby rose from the floor, — first falling down 
in order to rise, — was seized upon by 'mama,' taken to the 
railing to an imaginary wash-stand, and her face washed by 
rubbing. Her articles of clothing were then named in imagi- 
nation, and put on, one by one, in the most detailed and in- 
teresting fashion. During all this ' mama ' kept up a stream 
of baby talk to her infant : " Now your stockings, my darling ; 
now your skirt, sweetness — or, no — not yet — your shoes 
first," etc., etc. Baby acceded to all the details with more 
than the docility which real infants usually show. When this 



How to Observe Children s Imitations 345 

was done, "Now we must go tell papa good -morning, dearie," 
said mama. "Yes, mama," came the reply; and hand in 
hand they started to find papa. I, the spectator, carefully 
read my newspaper, thinking, however, that the reality of 
papa, seeing that he was so much in evidence, would break in 
upon the imagined situation. But not so. Mama led her 
baby directly past me to the end of the piazza, to a column 
in the corner. "There's papa," said mama; "now tell him 
good-morning." — " Good-morning, papa ; I am very well," 
said baby, bowing low to the column. "That's good," said 
mama, in a gruff, low voice, which caused in the real papa a 
thrill of amused self-consciousness most difficult to contain. 
"Now you must have your breakfast," said mama. The seat 
of a chair was made a breakfast-table, the baby's feigned bib 
put on, and her porridge carefully administered, with all the 
manner of the nurse who usually directs their breakfast. 
"Now" (after the meal, which suddenly became dinner 
instead of breakfast), "you must take your nap," said mama. 
"No, mama ; I don't want to," said baby. "But you must." 
— "No; you be baby, and take the nap." — "But all the 
other children have gone to sleep, dearest, and the doctor says 
you must," said mama. This convinced baby, and she lay 
down on the floor. "But I haven't undressed you." So 
then came all the detail of undressing; and mama carefully 
covered her up on the floor with a light shawl, saying, " Spring 
is coming now ; that'll be enough. Now shut your eyes, and 
go to sleep." — "But you haven't kissed me, mama," said 
the little one. "Oh, of course, my darling!" — so a long 
siege of kissing ! Then baby closed her eyes very tight, while 
mama went on tiptoe away to the end of the porch. " Don't 
go away, mama," said baby. "No; mama wouldn't leave 
her darling," came the reply. 

So this went on. The nap over, a walk was proposed, 



346 Conscious Imitation 

hats put on, etc., the mama exercising great care and solici- 
tude for her baby. One further incident to show this : when 
the baby's hat was put on — the real hat — mama tied the 
strings rather tight. "Oh! you hurt, mama," said baby. 
"No ; mama wouldn't draw the strings too tight. Let mama 
kiss it. There, is that better, my darling?" — all comically 
true to a certain sweet maternal tenderness that I had no 
difficulty in tracing. 

Now in such a case, what is to be reported, of course, is the 
facts. Yet knowledge of more than the facts is necessary, 
as I have said above, in order to get the full psychological 
lesson. We need just the information which concerns the 
rest of the family, and the social influences of the children's 
lives. I recognized at once every phrase which the chil- 
dren used in this play, where they got it, what it meant in its 
original context, and how far its meaning had been modified 
in this process which I have called ' social heredity.' But as 
that story is reported to strangers who have no knowledge of 
the children's social antecedents, how much beyond the 
mere facts of imitation and personification do they get from 
it ? And how much the more is this true when we examine 
those complex games of the nursery which show the brilliant 
fancy for situation and drama of the wide-awake four-year- 
old? 

Yet we psychologists are free to interpret; and how rich 
the lessons even from such a simple scene as this ! As for 
Helen, what could be a more direct lesson — a lived-out exer- 
cise in sympathy, in altruistic self-denial, in the healthy ele- 
vation of her sense of self to the dignity of kindly offices, 
in the sense of responsibility and agency, in the stimulus to 
original effort and the designing of means to ends — and 
all of it with the best sense of the objectivity which is quite 
lost in wretched self-consciousness in us adults, when we 



How to Observe Children s Imitations 347 

personate other characters? What could further all this 
highest mental growth better than the game by which the les- 
sons of her mother's daily life are read into the child's little 
self? And then, in the case of Elizabeth, certain things ap- 
pear. She obeys without command or sanction, she takes in 
from her sister the elements of personal suggestion in their 
simpler childish forms; and certainly such scenes, repeated 
every day with such variation of detail, must give something 
of the sense of variety and social equality which real life after- 
wards confirms and proceeds upon ; and lessons of the oppo- 
site character are learned by the same process. 

And all this exercise of fancy must strengthen the imagina- 
tive faculty. The prolonged situations, maintained some- 
times whole days, or possibly weeks, give strength to the 
imagination and train the attention. And I think, also, that 
the sense of essential reality, and its distinction from the 
unreal, the merely imagined, is helped by this sort of symbolic 
representation. But it has its dangers also — very serious 
ones. And possibly the best service of observation just now 
is to gather the facts with a view to the proper recognition and 
avoidance of the dangers. 

Finally, I may be allowed a word to interested parents. 
You can be of no use whatever to psychologists — to say 
nothing of the actual damage you may be to the children — 
unless you know your babies through and through. Especially 
the fathers ! They are willing to study everything else. They 
know every corner of the house familiarly, and what is done 
in it, except the nursery. A man labours for his children ten 
hours a day, gets his life insured for their support after his 
death, and yet he lets their mental growth, the formation of 
their characters, the evolution of their personality, go on by 
absorption — if no worse — from common, vulgar, imported 
and changing, often immoral, attendants ! Plato said the 



348 Conscious Imitation 

state should train the children; and added that the wisest 
man should rule the state. This is to say that the wisest man 
should tend his children ! Hugo gives us, in Jean Valjean 
and Cosette, a picture of the true paternal relationship. We 
hear a certain group of studies called the humanities, and it 
is right. But the best school in the humanities for every 
man is in his own house. 1 

1 In the detailed treatment of ' genetic logic ' in Thought and Things, Vol. 
I., Chap. VI., the make-believe or ' semblant' mode of construction is found 
to be an essential stage in the development of knowledge. 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Origin of Volition 

§ i. Description and Analysis oj Volition 

In earlier chapters I have endeavoured to trace the develop- 
ment of some aspects of the child's active life up to the rise of 
volition. The transition from the involuntary class of mus- 
cular reactions to which the general word ' suggestion ' applies, 
to the performance of actions foreseen and intended, occurs, 
as has been intimated, through the persistence and repetition 
of imitative suggestions. The distinction between simple 
imitation and persistent imitation has been made and illus- 
trated in an earlier place. 1 Now, in saying that volition — 
the clearly conscious phenomenon of will — arises historically 
on the basis of persistent imitation, what I mean is this : that 
the normal child's first exhibition oj volition is found in its 
repeated efforts to imitate something; and what it imitates, its 
'copy, 1 is of two great kinds: (i) something external, such as 
movements seen and noises heard; and (2) something internal, 
arising in its own memory, imagination, or thought. I shall 
consider, first, the rise of volition by imitation of external 
copies, — since this comes first in natural history, or phylo- 
genesis, — and then consider the modifications which are 
necessary when we come to consider memory and imagina- 
tion as setting copies for imitation to the individual child. 

An adequate analysis of will, with reference to the fiat of 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 4. 
349 



350 The Origin of Volition 

volition, reveals three great factors for which a theory of the 
origin of this function should provide. These three elements 
of the voluntary process are desire, deliberation, and effort. 
Desire is distinguished from impulse by its intellectual qual- 
ity, i.e. by the fact that it always has reference to a presen- 
tation or pictured object. This distinguishes desire from 
that formidable and refractory thing which is called ' restless- 
ness.' Organic impulses may pass into desires, when their 
objects become conscious. Further, desire implies lack of sat- 
isfaction of the impulse on which it rests — a degree of in- 
hibition, thwarting, unfulfilment. Put more generally, these 
two characteristics of desire are : (i) a pictured object sug- 
gesting associated experiences which it does not suffice to 
realize, and (2) an incipient motor reaction which the imaged 
object stimulates but does not discharge. 1 Analysis shows, 
I think, that these two points are equally important, because 
correlative. Without associated experiences, the object 
would give rise only to simple ideo-motor suggestion, as in the 
cases already cited, and in hypnotic suggestion; but these 
associated experiences lack body, satisfying quality, the 
'reality coefficient.' In Pauline phrase, 'What a man hath 
why doth he yet hope for?' But the mere picturing of 
objects with their associates, of whatever kind, does not con- 
stitute desire. Desire is a tendency-state, an incipient action, 
a condition of high potential, which, however, does not dis- 
charge itself. For example, — to take an illustration from 
our main subject, the infant, — the child continues to cry 
for an apple which his nurse refuses to give him ; the nurse's 
prohibition has not the requisite inhibitive force to obliterate 
the motor tensions aroused by the pictured fruit and its asso- 
ciated pleasures. But the child's father comes into the room, 

1 See my Handbook of Psychology, II., Chap. XIV., § 2 (pp. 324 ff.), for 
the general analysis of desire. 



Description and Analysis of Volition 351 

and says, l No ! ' Forthwith the child gives it up, satisfies 
himself with other objects, and no longer shows the motor 
tendencies and expressions which indicate desire. Yet in this 
latter case, the object-picture and its suggested pleasures are 
still present just the same. Real desire is gone, I think, as 
completely as in the hypnotic trance, when a new command 
turns the patient's motor responses into new channels. I do 
not desire the millions of my neighbour, nor a seat in the 
House of Lords ; my sense that such things are unattainable 
inhibits all active attitude. But, for the opposite reason, I 
do desire an increase in my salary, and a seat on the bench 
where competent psychologists hold counsel together. 

These prerequisites of desire allowed, it becomes relatively 
easy to fix the rise of the phenomenon in the infant's growth. 
Evidently, memory must be well developed, and the clear 
defining of a mental picture, that it may be an appropriate 
nucleus to a particular desire. This defining, it is further 
evident, must be sought, first, in connection with the senses 
whose so-called ' presentative ' element is earliest and most 
pronounced. Sight and sound memories fulfil this require- 
ment first ; they are most clear-cut and uncomplicated with 
other sense pictures. Further, muscular memories are among 
the earliest with which they become associated, some such 
connections being possibly congenital. And the necessary 
associations of pleasure, which powerfully impel to desire, 
are pungent and strong in the case of muscular sensations. 

I think it is in connection with sight and hearing memories 
of pleasant experiences, accordingly, as they are associated 
with pleasurable or not very painful movements, that desire 
is to be first looked for normally. Of auditory memories, 
the voice of mother or nurse, and sounds associated with the 
preparation of food, etc., become evident stimulations to 
lively anticipatory reactions which express desire. On the 



352 The Origin of Volition 

side of vision, again, similar indications are abundant, and 
extend back yet earlier in the infant's mental history. 

The theory which connects desire fundamentally with 
appetite and thirst for pleasure can be defended, I think, only 
when supplemented from the side of simple ideo-motor sug- 
gestion. It Is clear that appetite is at first organic, purely 
sensational ; it has no objective terminus. 1 And it is only as 
appetites get tied to some well-defined visual or auditory mem- 
ory picture, that the unrest of hunger and thirst becomes the 
desire for food and drink. But all desires are not thus 
founded in appetite, nor aimed at pleasure. It is only going 
a step farther, therefore, in the recognition of the essentials 
of the state called desire in normal and typical cases, to say, 
as I have said elsewhere, 2 that " desire takes its rise in visual 
(or auditory) suggestion, and develops under its lead." 3 

As a matter of fact, it seems to me to be extremely likely 
that the first cases of real desire in the infant's consciousness 
find their expression in the movements of its hands toward 
or from objects which it sees. We have seen that hand-move- 
ments are the natural outlets for clear differences in conscious- 
ness. As soon as there is clear visual presentation of objects 
we find impulsive muscular reactions directed toward them, 
at first in an excessively crude fashion, but becoming rapidly 
refined. These movements are free and uninhibited — sim- 
ple sensori-motor suggestive reactions. But we have seen, 
in the experiments described above, that this vain, and ran- 
dom grasping, which prevailed up to about the sixth month, 
tended to disappear rapidly in the two subsequent months — ■ 
just about the time of the rise of imitation. During the 

1 The cries and other movements which are associated with appetite are 
largely organic pain reflexes. 

2 Handbook, II., p. 324. 

3 Of course with blind or deaf children other senses supply the suggestions. 



Description and Analysis of Volition 353 

eighth month, my child, H., would not grasp at highly- 
coloured objects more than sixteen inches distant, her reach- 
ing distance being ten to twelve inches. This training of 
impulse is evidently an association of muscular sensations 
from the arm with visual experiences of distance. The sug- 
gested reaction becomes inhibited in a growing degree by 
counteracting nervous processes which probably began their 
influence much earlier. Here are the conditions necessary to 
the rise of desire. It is a typical instance, at any rate, whether 
or not it be, 1 as I think, the first instance, of the full factoi desire. 
The further requisite to volition, as analysis gives it, is 
'deliberation.' The phenomenon called /deliberative sug- 
gestion' has already been described and illustrated from 
child -life. 1 The line of cleavage between such suggestion and 
the deliberation of volition lies, I think, just where that be- 
tween impulse and desire lies. The characteristic thing 
about desire is the advanced representative process it in- 
volves — the third-level process on the brain side — with the 
complex sensori-motor system which is the basis of various 
inhibitions. So in deliberation, the complexity actually 
present in deliberative suggestion passes up to a higher level. 
The elements of it became clearly pictured, co-ordinated in the 
attention, and estimated, as to relative suitableness for ex- 
ecution. It is a vivid, clear thing in consciousness, this delib- 
eration, both as to the elements of representation and as to the 

1 Of course, like all other dividing lines in consciousness, such a line of 
division is not well marked. It is impossible to say just how far the dumb, 
unpictured, organic ends in cases of appetite, unrest, muscular discomfort, 
etc., must crystallize into outline and objective reference to be no longer 
impulse, but desire. The needs of our terminology rather than the mental 
facts themselves lead to such divisions. Sight and sound act first only be- 
cause and when they are first as memory objects; if they are absent, then less 
clear mental pictures get to be desired, of course. 

3 Above, Chap. VI., § 3. 

2A 



354 The Origin of Volition 

motor tendencies which they represent. On the contrary, 
the child's mind, in 'deliberative suggestion,' is analogous to 
the state of conflicting impulse, motor jerkiness, unreason- 
able caprice, seen also in certain pathological subjects, who 
are victims of aboulia in any of its forms. The essential 
difference — and it is essential, I think, functionally con- 
sidered — is that the deliberation of volition involves at- 
tention at its normal gait, and the motor co-ordinations which 
are characteristic of it and of its seat among the highest brain 
relationships. Now the resolution of this conscious com- 
plexity of motives, as found in deliberation, gives another and 
the culminating characteristic of volition i.e. effort. 

Effort, in all its forms, from simple consent, acceptance, 
ratification, of an action as good or as real, to the violent 
exertion of despair, or passion, — effort arises just after 
deliberation, and puts an end to it. We need not go into the 
vexed question of the meaning of effort, its basis, etc. ; all we 
need here is its natural history. And everybody will admit 
that it puts an end to mental hesitation and deliberation, it 
settles things so far as one's attitude is concerned, and issues 
in action so far as inhibiting conditions will permit. The 
sense of effort, then, seems to accompany, or indeed to be, the 
passage of consciousness into a state of motor monoideism, 
or strong attention, after the perplexities of deliberation. It 
arises just when an end is put to motor plurality by synthesis 
or co-ordination. 1 

§ 2. The Typical Case of the Rise of Volition in the Child 

These three characters of volition — desire, attentive 
deliberation, effort — find their typical fulfilment, I think, 

1 Cf. the full treatment of the appropriate chapters of James, Princ. of 
Psychol., II. , Chap. XXVI., and Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Vol. II., 
especially Chap. XV., § i, and Chap. XVI., § i. 



Rise of Volition in the Child 355 

in the 'try-try-again' experience of infants; and the evident 
case of this, seen in the persistent imitation of sounds heard 
and movements seen, the 'external copies' spoken of above, 
may be now considered. 

We have seen that sight and hearing, in direct association 
with muscular sensation, supply the materials for reproduc- 
tion largely at this early period ; and it has now been urged 
that we are to look to imitation, considered as a type of reaction, 
as the principal method of adjustment of the organism to 
its surroundings. Independently, however, of this last pre- 
sumption, — indeed, in my own mental progress it was the facts 
of early volition that led me to the broader view of imitation 
in mental development, — the direct evidence on the point 
is quite convincing. 

Persistent Imitation and Volition. — In persistent imita- 
tion we have an advance on simple imitation in two ways: 
(1) A comparison of the first result produced by the child 
(movement, sound) with the suggesting image or 'copy' 
imitated. This is nascent deliberation. For, when the 
dynamogenic influences of these presentations are taken 
into account, we find a conflict on the motor side. The 
old hand-movement, let us say, associated with the 'copy,' 
as it has been established by simple imitation, instinct, or 
impulse, does not adequately represent the influence now 
exerted by the 'copy,' plus that of the new optical picture 
created by the reaction itself. The dynamogenic condition 
is now complex. This gives rise to the state of dissatisfac- 
tion, motor restlessness, which is desire, best described in 
this connection by the phrase 'will-stimulus'; (2) the out- 
burst of this complex motor condition in a new reaction, 
accompanied in consciousness by the attainment of a mono- 
ideistic state — the 'end in view' — and the feeling of effort. 
Here, then, in persistent imitation we have, thus briefly put, 



356 



The Origin of Volition 



the necessary elements of the voluntary psychosis for the first 
time clearly present. 

The reason that in imitation the material for volition is 
found is seen to be that here the 'circular process,' already 
described, maintains itself in a conscious way through the 
picturing of sights, sounds, etc. In reactions which are not 
consciously imitative, for example an ordinary pain-move- 
ment reaction, this circular process, whereby the result of the 
first movement becomes itself a stimulus to the second, etc., 
is not brought about ; or, if it do arise, it consists simply in a 
repetition of the same motor event fixed by association — as 
the repetition of the ma sound so common with very young 
infants. Consciousness remains monoiideistic. But in per- 
sistent imitation, the reaction performed comes in by eye 
or ear as a new and different stimulus (see Fig. XIII.) ; here 




Fig. XIII.— Simple Imitation, v, v' = Visual Seat ; mp— Motor Seat; 
mt — Muscle moved ; mc = Muscle-sense Seat ; A = ' Copy ' imitated ; 
B= Imitation made. The two Processes » and d' flow together 
in the Old Channel v, mp, fixed by Association, and the Reac- 
tion is repeated without Change or Effort. 

is the state of motor polyideism necessary for the rise of the 
feeling of effort. The motor process must be reduced by co- 
ordination to a reaction which will reproduce the copy, and at 



Rise of Volition in the Child 357 

the same time employ, with least modification, the channels of 
discharge already fixed by the association between presenta- 
tion and movement. 

From this and the other lines of evidence given below, 
we are able to see more clearly the conditions under which 
effort arises. It seems clear that (1) the muscular sen- 
sations arising from a suggestive reaction do not present 
all the conditions; in young children, just as in habitual 
adult performances, muscular sensations simply tend to give a 
repetition of the muscular event by strict association, without 
any new attentive co-ordination at all. There is no new 
adaptation, and so no effort. The kinesthetic centre empties 
into a lower motor centre in some such way as that described 
by James, 1 along the diagonal line mc, mp in the ' motor 
square' diagram given above (Fig. XIII.). This is also true 
when (2) sensations of the ' remote' kinesthetic order, the 
sight or hearing of movements made, are added to the mus- 
cular sensations. They may all coalesce to produce again a 
repetition of the original reaction. The 'remote' and ' im- 
mediate' sources of motor stimulation reinforce each other. 
This is seen in a child's satisfied repetition of its own mistakes 
in speaking and drawing, although it hears and sees its own 
performances. Consequently (3) there is muscular effort only 
when the 'copy' persists and is compared with the result of the 
first reaction ; that is, on the mental side, when the two pres- 
entations are held together in the attention, so that together 
they represent one intended movement or mental end; and 
on the physical side, when the two processes, started respec- 
tively by the 'copy' and the reactive result, are co-ordinated 
together in a common motor discharge (cc, mp r in Fig. XIV.). 
The stimulus to repeated effort arises from the lack of this 
co-ordination or identity in the motor influences of the dif- 

1 Princ. of Psychology, II., p. 582. 



358 The Origin of Volition 

ferent stimulations which reach a possible centre of co-ordi- 
nation simultaneously ; or if we consider such co-ordination 
only functionally — instead of making it a matter of a separate 
local seat — this will-stimulus represents the degree of dif- 
ficulty these stimulations have in getting thus united in a 
common motor function. 1 The mental outcome, effort, ac- 



me'' 



Fig. XI V. — Persistent Imitation with Effort. C= Successful Imita- 
tion ; cc = Co-ordinating Centre, either Local or Purely Func- 
tional. Other Letters same as in Fig. XI II., with the added 
Circuit cc, mf, mf , mc' . The Processes at v and v' do not flow 
together in the Old Channel v, mp, but are co-ordinated at cc 
in a New Reaction mp' , mf, which includes all the Elements of 
the ' Copy ' (A) and more. The Useless Elements then fall 

AWAY BECAUSE THEY ARE USELESS AND THE SUCCESSFUL EFFORT IS 
ESTABLISHED. 

companies the gathering of these combined influences, and, 
as soon as this outburst reproduces the l copy,' the effort is said 

1 This does not necessarily imply a central versus peripheral theory of the 
sense of effort ; for the ' relative difficulty' spoken of in effecting the co-ordina- 
tion in the attention may itself represent peripheral elements which inhibit the 
attention, or lack of the necessary peripheral elements to stimulate the atten- 
tion, or the very feeling of effort may be made up of sensations from the 
muscles which are used in the act of attention. See Chap. XV., §§ i ff. 



Rise of Volition in the Child 359 

to 'succeed,' the subject is satisfied, 'will-stimulus' disap- 
pears, and the reaction tends to become simple as habit. 

Physiologically the point which distinguishes persistent 
imitation with effort from simple imitation with repetition 
is this co-ordination of motor processes. In simple imitation 
the excitement aroused by the reaction, as its result is reported 
inwards by the eye or ear, finds no outlet except that already 
utilized in the earlier suggestive reactions. Hence it passes 
off in the way of a repetition of the earlier discharge, which 
represents inherited tendency, reflex movement, accidental 
association, pleasure-pain acquisition, or what not. All this 
is an affair of the 'second level,' of suggestion, of reactive 
consciousness. The child repeats its prattle over and over, 
as it lies abed in the early morning, simply from vigour, not 
from desire, nor from effort, least of all with deliberation. 
The sounds he makes are accompanied by sensations in his 
vocal organs, and what he hears he makes again, and so on, 
simply because his machinery works that way — works easily 
and gives him the pleasure of exercise and rhythm. 

But persistent imitation — how different ! The same 
reaction is not repeated. He is no longer delighted with his 
simple activity. He detects differences between what he sees 
or hears and what he produces by hand or tongue, 1 and grows 
restless under these differences. Then he makes effort to 
reduce the difference by altering his movements, and what is 

1 "It seems just to say," remarks Janet (Autom. Psych., p. 475), "that 
voluntary effort consists in the systematization of images and memories 
which are accustomed to express themselves one at a time automatically"; 
and (p. 474), "the patient copies the movement of my arm automatically, 
while I copy a drawing voluntarily; the reason of it is that the patient acts 
only because he has an image of the action, and he carries it out without pass- 
ing judgment upon it [simple imitative suggestion], while I copy the drawing, 
perceiving the resemblance, and because I perceive it" [persistent imitation 
or volition]. Compare his context. 



360 The Origin of Volition 

most remarkable, he succeeds in doing so. How he does this, 
— how he brings about a change in his reactions, from sense- 
less repetition to intelligent conformity to the copy which he 
imitates, — that is the question of accommodation, but he 
does it, and the least that this can mean is that there is in 
some way a modification of the impelling influence of his old 
associations. 

What happens is an 'effort,' and by this effort the two stimu- 
lations, the original 'copy' and his own reproduction of it, 
are combined in one motor response. The two centres, or 
partial centres, stimulated by the original copy, on the one 
hand, and by the reaction as it is seen or heard, on the other 
hand, get combined in a common action, whose outcome is not 
carried off entirely by the old associated channel of discharge, 
but finds in part new adjacent channels ; and so the external 
reaction becomes different and more adequate, only to be 
reported in again by eye or ear, and so by co-ordination to 
produce again a new effort, etc. 

The foregoing development uses the term 'co-ordination' 
with a twofold application : first, it is applied to the physical 
process in the brain, whereby, as we may suppose, different 
areas of stimulation are brought together for a united function 
in a very complex way. It involves at once greater com- 
plexity and larger unity. It is the type of function character- 
istic of the highest level, the cortex. The lower reactions, the 
reflexes, suggestive responses, etc., are each, when taken alone, 
independent in great measure ; each acts for itself on its own 
stimulus. But cortical processes are not so. While they are 
more varied, they are also more unstable and more intercon- 
nected. They coalesce in a single function which does not 
show its enormous complexity on its face. For example, 
speech involves five or six well-localized areas co-ordinated 
in a common discharge, and it is rare that one is injured with- 



Rise of Volition in the Child 361 

out injuring the common function which draws support from 
each. 

On the mental side we find co-ordination also, and it is 
always a process which takes attention in the learning and, 
until it becomes fixed by habit, in the execution also, in- 
variably. Every original co-ordination of stimulations in- 
volving desire, deliberation, effort, is an act of attention. 
This, of course, cannot be a mere incidental or unessential 
fact. All that we know of attention shows it to be too 
central a thing for that. It remains, therefore, among the 
problems yet to be answered, what attention is, how its rise 
takes place, and what its presence means in the beginning 
of voluntary movement. 1 Here we may remark that the 
function of consciousness, in this act of persistent imitation, 
seems to be exhausted in the fact of close attention to the 
'copy.' The infant does not attend to his movements, 2 nor 
does he shift his attention from his copy to his own imitation, 
except between his efforts. On the contrary, in visual imita- 
tion, for example, he keeps his eye fixed on the movement, 
the tracing, or the action of the person whom he is imitating ; 
and his success in the effort seems to depend upon the degree 
in which he is able to hold this copy series up steady and un- 
changed before him. How it comes that during this con- 
centration upon the copy, and by reason of it, the muscular 
actions are conforming themselves more and more to its 
exact reproduction — this has been the topic of the earlier 
chapters on Development. 3 

The complex 'copy' of persistent imitation is necessary, 

1 See below, Chap. XV. 

2 So we have seen in connection with 'tracery-imitation,' above. 

s Golf-players know the disastrous effects of taking the eye off the ball; 
the attention is visual, and the entire co-ordination, the stroke, is secured 
through it. 



362 The Origin of Volition 

therefore, as a stimulus to the tentative voluntary use of the 
muscles. The theory that all voluntary movements are led 
up to by spontaneous reactions which result in pleasure or 
pain, and then get repeated only because of their hedonic 
result, will not hold water for an instant in the presence of 
the phenomena of imitation. Suppose H. endeavouring in 
the crudest fashion to put a rubber on the end of a pencil, 
after seeing me do it, — one of her earliest imitations. What 
a chaos of ineffective movements ! But after repeated efforts 
she gets nearer and nearer it, till at last, with daily object- 
lessons from me, she accomplishes it. Here one of the most 
valuable combinations of thumb and finger movements is 
acquired, simply by imitation, and in the face of constant 
discouragement, anything but pleasant to the child. If it 
is due to the fact simply that movement gives pleasure, why 
does she not turn to other movements ? Why persist in this 
one failure-bringing thing ? Suppose there had been no im- 
pulse to do what she saw me do, no motor force in the simple 
idea of the rubber on the pencil, no instinct to imitate ; what 
happy combination of Bain's spontaneous and accidental 
movements would have produced this result, and how long 
would it have taken the child if she had waited for experiences 
actually pleasurable to build up this motor combination? 

In cases of persistent imitation there is more than associa- 
tion as such. The movements imitated are new, as com- 
binations. It is probable, it is true, that various ideas of 
former movements are brought up, and that the child has the 
consciousness of general motor capacity, resting, in the first 
place, upon spontaneous impulsive reactions, and it is prob- 
able that this consciousness is a kind of massed or bunched 
sense of the particular member whose action is necessary, 
arising from former movements of it ; but on this insufficient 
associational basis he strikes out into the deepest water of 



Rise of Volition in the Child 363 

untried experience. For this reason, as was said above, I 
believe that in persistent imitation we have the skeleton- 
process of volition ; meaning that at this stage consciousness 
is not held down in its motor outcome strictly to past reac- 
tions held in memory, but issues as a new and more adaptive 
co-ordination of them. Physiologically, we would expect 
that the brain energy released by such a new stimulus as the 
pencil-rubber combination would pass off by the motor 
channels already fixed by spontaneous, reflex, and associated 
reactions, i.e. that the child would be content with a motor 
reaction of the suggestive kind. But not so. He is not con- 
tent until he produces a new reaction of this particular sort ; 
and we must suppose that, in consequence of each effort of 
the child, the physical process is heightened and its issuing 
movement selected from, until the one copy is reproduced. 
Volition is a case of functional selection. 

It will be strange, in my opinion, if this view of the origin 
of volition do not seem quite the most natural one. What 
are we really bringing about in willing anything ? Are we 
not hoping that through us a kind of experience, object, 
thing in the world, may be brought about after the pattern 
of our idea or purpose? Are we not trying to actualize 
something which we think ought to be reinstated for us or 
for others? But is not this just the essential thing in imita- 
tion, — the reinstatement of something, the copying of what 
has already been in us, in others, or in the world ? A child 
imitates automatically a sound he hears — one case ; and 
then, remembering it but not hearing it, wills to make it — 
a second case. 1 Where is the difference in the type of occur- 
rence in the two cases, as far as the child's active life is con- 
cerned ? The only difference is that, in the former case, his 

1 Cf. Binet's exposition of James's view in terms of imitation {Alter, of 
Personality, pp. 156 f.). 



364 The Origin of Volition 

ear brings to him what he imitates, and his motor apparatus 
is ready for it; in the latter case, his memory brings it to 
him, and his motor apparatus is not altogether ready for it. 
Is it not likely, therefore, that the simplest case of the more 
complex instance of this one typical process springs out of 
the most complex case of the simpler instance, — that the 
growing complexity of the conditions is just what is meant 
by the child's desire, and that the growing richness and 
explicitness and difficulty of the conscious performance, what 
is meant by his volition ? 

The position of volition in the progress of the individual, 
in his life history, may be depicted by a figure (Fig. XV.), the 
environment (1), in the shape of suggestion (2), in imping- 
ing upon the organism, stimulates to volition (3), which, 
when ratified and repeated, gives rise to habits (4), and these 
habits tend to become automatic reactions and impulses, 
only to come in contact with new suggestions from the environ- 
ment, and so on. Thus the life plan becomes fuller and 
wider. I have used the spiral to denote this progress, 
which is continuous throughout the life period. Its analogue 
— the 'life-spiral' of race development — is given in the next 
figure below. 

The crisis in the child's motor development, which is pre- 
cipitated by persistent imitation, tends to come again and 
again to the front in later years in many interesting situa- 
tions. The following game of my children, H., of five, and 
E., of nearly three years, reflects well the elements of choice, 
as the theory of the origin of volition requires them. I set 
the two children to walking fast around an oval table in 
contrary directions, marking the places where they were to 
meet, on the two opposite sides, with chairs drawn up to the 
table. They were to meet behind the first chair, shake hands, 
and then pass on to the second chair, and so on. On coming 



Rise of Volition in the Child 



365 



to the first chair, the smaller girl, E., was so impressed with 
the process of hand -shaking, in which she closely imitated 
her sister, and so thoroughly won over to her sister's action, 
that she invariably started off in the same direction with her, 
thus retracing her own steps, instead of passing on alone to 



Babit 




Environment 
(1) 

Fig. XV. — Illustrating Ontogenetic Development 

the other chair. H. remonstrated with her again and again ; 
and the child's conflict in motor impulses was instructive in 
the extreme. She always took at least one step with H., 
generally more, then turned and started off alone in a hesitat- 
ing and uncertain way, and never seemed quite confident 
until she saw her sister coming around the table to meet her 
again. 



366 The Origin of Volition 

Here it is easy to see that the course of a continued sug- 
gestive reaction — walking regularly forward — is brought 
into conflict with the new copy for imitation, supplied by 
her sister's action. There arises a balancing of motor pro- 
cesses, attention is divided, and the final course is the out- 
come of a co-ordination of these rival processes in the atten- 
tion. So she wills — and it is a real act of will — to go on * 
around the table alone, but only after the great hesitation or 
embarrassment which is a true indication of deliberation. 

§ 3. Phylo genetic 

Coming to look at the place of volition in the race develop- 
ment of consciousness, we find that the determination of 
the method of its rise in the individual is instructive. Viewed 
objectively, a mental organism is subject, at any stage, to 
the two principles, Habit and Accommodation, already formu- 
lated above. Habit represents what is congenital with what 
it tends most naturally to do, under the guidance of all ex- 
periences up to date. Accommodation represents its degree 
of openness or adaptability, in giving the new reactions, which 
new stimulations or arrangements of stimulations call upon it 
to make. Now just as in the child the phenomena of sug- 
gestion became more and more complex, from the physio- 
logical reflex type up to the ideo-motor, deliberative, and, 
finally, the persistent type, which is volition; so, in the 
animal series, there is a corresponding development. Voli- 

1 This 'game,' which became very popular with the children, was really an 
experiment on my part, suggested, in meditation on this topic, by contrast 
to an earlier experiment which I tried with H., when she was in her second 
and third years. This latter was an attempt to bring out the regularity of the 
operation of suggestion, by arranging attractive things about a room, so that 
only after reaching one could she see the next, etc. I found her the victim, 
of course, to this device. She rushed from one of the objects to another 
with great avidity. 



Phylogenetic 367 

tion is found only in animals having ideation, memory, 
desires. Who can doubt that the dog desires the morsel 
which he holds upon his nose, awaiting his master's permis- 
sion to eat it ? All the conditions of desire are there : com- 
plex representation, incipient action, and inhibition. And 
who can doubt that there is volition when he gets permission 
and eats the morsel ? But lower in the scale, such cases shade 
down into the sphere of suggestion, as the animal becomes less 
ideational, less social, more organic, and more dependent 
upon a small circle of stimulations. 

In volition, therefore, we find the point of meeting of 
the two principles, Habit and Accommodation, and their 
common function. It is through volition that the levelling 
effects of habit are counteracted in the higher orders of life, 
since it brings possibilities of adjustment to absent and 
distant conditions, and so wages conflict with the dictates of 
present sensation. Yet it is through volition on the other 
hand, that new habits are formed. Only by the continued 
inhibitions and controls of volition is a new action which is 
still hard to perform preserved amid the pressing urgencies 
of what is old and easy. So volition ministers to both kinds 
of development, and sums them up ; and so justifies both its 
survival and its splendid eminence among all the survivals in 
the mental series. 

To put the same thought from the point of view of any 
given stage of evolution, we may say that two factors are 
potent in the manifestations of the character of an organ- 
ism at whatever stage : endowment and environment. Habits 
add to endowment, and all accommodations are concessions 
of endowment to environment. Now, as is seen in Fig. XVI., 
the environment (1), working as suggestion (2), brings about 
a new volition (3), this is repeated by persistent reaction, 
and so forms habit (4), this is added to endowment (5) by 



3 68 



The Origin of Volition 



natural selection, 1 and so constitutes an element of in- 
stinctive character (6), in later generations, and this char- 
acter or instinct, in the new individual, again confronts the 
suggestions of the physical and moral environment (i). So 
we have in the highest exhibition of reflective volition no 
departure in type — however wide a departure it be in mean- 



Endowmentt \HaUt 
Birth 




if 

Environment 
W 

Fig. XVI.— Illustrating Phylogenetic Development. 

ing and implications for philosophy — from the first adaptive 
reactions of organic life. Habit is formed, in the face of sug- 
gestion, through persistent imitation and volition, and habit, 
selected for character, is modified in turn by changed 
environment which is reacted to by imitation and volition. 

1 By selection of variations that 'coincide,' in Lloyd Morgan's phrase, 



Special Evidence 369 

What is this but a phylogenetic exhibition of the 'circular 
activity ' seen in all development ? — just what we would 
expect, if volition is really a new, more complex form of the 
interaction of Habit and Accommodation in the growth of the 
individual. 

§ 4. Special Evidence 

Besides the very high presumption that volition, considered 
as a departure in the mental life, arises in the way of a new 
adaptation of the living creature to its surroundings, and 
that it also follows the law of accommodation by imitation 
which is the agent of all the earlier adaptations ; and besides 
the presumption afforded by the great reasonableness of the 
view as based upon an adequate analysis of desire and voli- 
tion — besides all this, there are several lines of objective 
evidence which connect early volition directly with reactions 
of the imitative type. 

I. In the first place, the instances of so-called pre-imita- 
tive volition in infants, reported by various observers, can 
generally be explained in much simpler terms. The cate- 
gories of suggestion which I have marked out in an earlier 
chapter, shading off into one another as they do by imper- 
ceptible degrees, seem to afford plenty of latitude for these 
cases. They differ greatly from the well-defined classes of 
movements called reflex, impulsive, automatic, etc., inas- 
much as normal suggestion represents a side of mental growth 
which has heretofore gone largely unformulated. Reflex, 
impulse, instinct, etc., all represent habit, but they all pre- 
suppose accommodation, and it is only as we get some kind 
of a unifying principle of accommodation, that the partial 
statements of the law of habit get any common significance. 
Suggestion is the accommodation side of growth, all the way 



2JO The Origin of Volition 

up to the most vivid forms of consciousness, and imitation 
is certainly — in its conscious form — the most direct form 
of suggestion. And even after volition ushers in a higher 
type of accommodation, suggestion still supplies most of its 
impetus. So when it seems impossible to assign a given 
reaction to any one of the categories of habit, that is no 
reason for leaping at once to volition, the most advanced 
form of accommodation ; rather ought we to attempt to find 
its place under suggestion, which is the simpler form of 
accommodation. 

Accordingly, we may, as the result shows, place all of the 
infant's so-called 'efforts,' in its early months, under the 
category of suggestion, only having to recognize certain 
cases which are, more evidently than others, germinal to 
volition. My child E., early in her second month, strained 
to lift her head at the sound of any one entering the room, 
and in her fourth month, after the child had been frequently 
lifted to a sitting posture by the clasping of her hands around 
her mother's fingers, the mere sight of fingers extended before 
her made her grasp at them and 'attempt' to raise herself. 
Now, as it happens, it is just the case of so-called 'effort' 
that is appealed to as showing very early volition. Preyer 
says: 1 "We may, therefore, without hesitation, refer the 
period of the first distinct manifestation of the activity of 
will in the infant in this field, to that week in which the head, 
while he is awake, no longer bobs hither and thither — in 
general, the fourth to the fifth month." That is, Preyer 
holds that the successful holding up of the head is voluntary, 
while the various unsuccessful attempts of the child to do so 
were possibly not. 

These earlier 'efforts' are reactions perfected by associa- 
tion between the advantageous sensations secured through 

1 Mind of the Child, Vol. I., p. 265. 



Special Evidence 371 

sight, taste, etc., while the child is held erect, and the mus- 
cular sensations of erectness. So Preyer holds, and this ex- 
planation is, I think, quite correct as far as it goes. But as 
to this particular act, we find these 'efforts' suggested by- 
noises, sights, especially by personal suggestions, at such an 
early age that the reaction for erect posture is probably to 
be considered a matter of native congenital tendency, just as 
the walking reflex is. So that the whole thing becomes a 
case of physiological and sensori-motor suggestion. And 
even when acquired completely — when there is no ' bobbing 
hither and thither ' — there is no need whatever to find in it, 
as Preyer does, evidence of will. We adults hold our heads 
up because our normal sensational series, especially of the 
visual and muscular sensations, and their correspondences, 
have been acquired since we have been holding our heads 
up, and so they all conspire by their associative influence to 
stimulate the contractions necessary for this head position. 
There is no need to bring in volition, or even attention. And 
it is probable that these associations only reinforce the native 
tendency I have spoken of. Such efforts, therefore, on the 
part of the child, lack deliberation, and all but, perhaps, the 
faintest glimmerings of desire. 

A similar account may be given of 'simple imitation.' It 
does not involve volition; it is, rather, simple ideo-motor 
suggestion made possible by associations between visual, 
auditory, or other stimulations, on the one hand, and 
muscle sensations on the other. Here, again, I differ from 
Preyer, instead of having the advantage of agreeing with him, 
which the following quotation seems to give me. 1 He says : 2 
"The first imitations are the first distinct, represented, and 

1 Professor Sully called my attention to this apparent agreement. See his 
remarks, Proc. of Cong, of Exp. Psychol., London meeting, 1892, p. 55. 

2 Preyer, Mind of the Child, L, 340. 



372 The Origin of Volition 

willed movements." This makes all imitations voluntary: 
both the simple and the persistent forms. Now Preyer recog- 
nizes such a distinction, — 'spontaneous' and 'deliberative' 
imitation are his terms, — but does nothing with the dis- 
tinction. To me it is as fundamental in the child's develop- 
ment as the distinction between suggestion and volition, 
between reaction and conduct. Simple imitation falls easily 
under suggestion, because it may not involve memory, nor 
selection, nor variation, nor desire, nor deliberation, nor 
effort ; only a sensation and a movement in organic connection. 
This is mere habit. How many of the essentials of volition 
does the parrot have, or the young bird that imitates the old 
one's flight? Why should these acts be thought voluntary? 
But persistent imitation, as we have seen, presents new prob- 
lems: the breaking up of habit; vivid selection on the part 
of consciousness ; the new, strenuous experience called effort ; 
and the actual accomplishment of the new, by a real process 
of learning. Indeed, so great is the difference, that when- 
ever a natural history view of consciousness, which involves 
continuous development, is desired, it is just this magnificent 
appearance of discontinuity which is the point of greatest 
difficulty; and it may be as well to remind the disciples of 
Maine de Biran, Reid, and William James, that the act of 
the infant's 'try-try-again' gives them their golden oppor- 
tunity. 

These instances may serve to show the way in which, as 
I think, the category of suggestion, on the accommodation 
side of mental development, has been neglected, with the 
result that the 'psychologist's fallacy' has been committed 
regularly by those who have read volition into the infant's 
consciousness at such early stages of its growth. 

So far, therefore, as cases of so-called effort shade down- 
wards into suggestions, they are properly classified as pre- 



Special Evidence 



373 



volitional. But there is a distinct class of phenomena in which 
the shading is the reverse, — cases in which the rudiments 
of volition must be recognized even in the absence of ' ex- 
ternal copies' for imitation. This brings us, in a later sec- 
tion, 1 to the child's imitation of its own memories and imagi- 
nations, and to those cases which illustrate the relation of 
'organic' and ' plastic' imitation to volition. 

II. The results of a research on students, reported else- 
where 2 under the title, 'Persistent Imitation Experiments. , 
The subject is told to imitate a simple figure, called the 'copy,' 
set before him, drawing in pencil or chalk, at a single stroke. 
Then he compares his performance with the copy and tries 

TABLE VIII 



Copy 


Will Stimulus 
(Av. No. of Efforts 
in Each Experi- 
ment) 


No. of 
Experiments 


No. of 
Persons 


a. External visual, with comparison 

b. External visual, without compari- 

son 


3-571 
i 
J- ratio 1.72 

2.09 J 

" 1 

L ratio 1.60 

1.27 J 

5.66 1 

j. ratio 1.55 
3-66J 


Si 

30 

6 


6 


c. Memory image after ten minutes, 

with comparison 

d. Memory image after ten minutes, 

without comparison 

e. Memory image after fifteen min- 

utes, with comparison 

/ Memory image after fifteen min- 
utes, without comparison . . . 


4 

1 



Persistent Imitation Experiments: A. Influence of comparison = increase 
of will stimulus from about 75% to 50% according to lapse of time. 

1 Below, § 5 of this chapter. 

2 See Proc. of Cong, of Exp. Psychology, London, August, 1892, p. 51, for 
first statement. 



374 



The Origin of Volition 



again ; and so on, until satisfied with the result. This done, 
the number of his efforts is noted. This I may call in the 
tables (VIII., IX.) the case 'with comparison.' Then he is 
instructed to go through the same experiment again, except 
that his eyes are now bandaged, so that he is not able to com- 
pare his own results with the copy. The number of efforts 
is noted as before. This is the case 'without comparison.' 

Now it is evident that the relative number of ' efforts ' in 
each case may be taken to indicate the amount of tendency 
the subject has to continue the imitation, — a quantity tech- 
nically known as 'will-stimulus.' The results given in the 
tables show that in the case 'without comparison' the subject 
is liable to be satisfied with a smaller number of efforts ; this 
would indicate that when the new visual picture is not re- 
ported, there is not the same will-stimulus. But in the other 
case, 'with comparison,' effort after effort is made, until 
success is attained, or until the subject gives it up ; so the 
inference is that there is then continued will-stimulus until 

TABLE IX 



Copy 


Will Stimulus 
(Av. No. of Efforts 
in Each Experi- 
ment) 


No. of 
Experiments 


No. of 
Persons 


a. External visual, with comparison 

b. Memory image after ten minutes, 

with comparison 

c. Memory image after one minute, 

without comparison 

d. Memory image after ten minutes, 

without comparison 


3-571 

j- ratio 1.79 
2. J 

2.09 1 

\ ratio 1.65 
1.27 J 


51 
30 
51 
30 


6 

4 
6 

4 



Persistent Imitation Experiments: B. Diminution of motor force of 
memory after ten minutes = from about 60 % to 80 %, according as com- 
parison is made, or not, of results with memory image. 



Special Evidence 375 

either the motor plurality is overcome, or the stimulus effect 
is itself inhibited by discouragement. The figures (Table 
VIII., A) show that in the case of comparison there is an in- 
crease of from 75 per cent, down to 50 per cent, in the will 
stimulus for memory durations from one down to ten minutes. 

Table IX., B. shows the further interesting result that if the 
external 'copy' be removed and the subject rely upon his 
memory, the number of efforts tends to decrease in some ratio 
with the length of time elapsed. This is what we should ex- 
pect from other experiments on the faithfulness of memory, 1 
which show that the memory process loses its definite char- 
acter with time. The figures show a diminution of the motor 
force of a memory after ten minutes from about 60 per cent, to 
80 per cent., according as comparison of results with the 
memory image is made or not. 

This investigation gives evidence of the necessity for motor 
co-ordination — what is called ' comparison ' — in the an- 
tecedents to voluntary movement. This is the essential 
contention of the doctrine of the genesis of volition stated 
above ; and it is interesting to find that in our adult lif e our 
choices are still backed in a regular way by that dynamogenic 
agency called 'will-stimulus.' 

III. Another kind of evidence is found in the behaviour 
of the attention. In a great class of pathological cases of 

1 Experiments on memory faithfulness have been made by Wolfe, by 
Ebbinghaus, by Miiller, and by Warren and myself (Proceedings of the Amer. 
Psych. Assoc, 1893, p. 18; see also The Psychological Review, 1895, pp. 
236 f., cf. Kennedy, Psychol. Review, Vol. V., 1898, p. 477)- 

The method of testing memory by measuring the amount of motor 
force or 'will-stimulus' possessed by memories after various intervals, was 
first proposed in connection with these experiments (see Proceedings of 
Cong, of Exp. Psychol., 2d Session, London, 1892, p. 51). This method is 
called the 'dynamogenic method,' and a correlation is suggested between the 
relative motor force of a memory, after a certain interval, and its degree of 
faithfulness to its original perception, after the same interval. 



376 The Origin of Volition 

anaesthesia which involves paralysis when the eyes or ears 
are closed, but not when they are open — we find evidence 
that disturbances of attention bring about derangements of 
voluntary movement. This may occur even when the patient 
keeps intact all the apparatus of movement, and all the mem- 
ories of the movements which he desires to make. And the 
result is sometimes reversed ; a patient may be able to move 
a member except when he sees it. Here the visual images 
inhibit the movement. 1 In the former case, the attention 
has become dependent, for certain voluntary functions, upon 
immediate visual or auditory stimulation, and in its absence, 
these voluntary functions are impossible. 2 This shows that 
a degree of correlation of optical, kinesthetic, auditory, etc., 
impressions is necessary for voluntary movement, and that 
this correlation is here, as everywhere else, a function of the 
attention. In normal voluntary movement, attention need 
not be given necessarily to the muscular movement itself, — 
although that is one type of voluntary attention, — but it 
may be given to some other kind of sensation, auditory, visual, 
etc., which has come to play the leading part in this particular 
movement, and under the lead of which the correlation which 
issues in movement is effected. 

More is said of this below in the general theory of volun- 
tary movement ; 3 but here it may be noted how clearly this 
accords with what we found above to be the behaviour of the 
child's attention in performing its first voluntary drawings. 
His attention has to be fastened upon the thing or 'copy' 
imitated, not on his hand, nor on his memories of movement. 

1 Janet, 'Un cas d'Aboulie,' Revue Philosophique, March, 1891. 

2 See Binet and Fer6, who report a patient who could thrust out his tongue 
only when he saw it in a mirror, Arch, de Physiologie, 1887, II., p. 371 ; Pick, 
Zeitsch. fur Physiologie, IV., 1892, pp. 161 fif. ; and Baldwin, Philos. Review, 
II., 1893, p. 206. 

» Below, Chap. XV, §§ 3, 4. 



Special Evidence $77 

Passy finds that a young child copies a new thing or copy by 
giving attention to his visual memory pictures. This is 
shown, as I have said above, by the fact that he puts into his 
drawing, certain features such as ears, arms, and minor 
details, which are not in the actual thing or copy, but only in 
his own earlier visual pictures. So I find that in imitating 
new words, there is a constant tendency on the part of the 
child, to reproduce terms he already knows in place of the 
words of the new lesson. In imitating speech also, the child 
does not learn by paying attention to the lips of the speaker. 
He sometimes learns the guttural letters, which are not spoken 
with the lips, sooner than many of the others. Much less 
does he pay attention to his own lips ; from all appearances 
he does not know that he is using his lips. The most that lip 
sensations or memories do is to supply to him the series of 
associations which follow upon the auditory stimulations. It 
is these last to which he pays attention. 

Cases are abundant not only in which aphasia follows 
lesions of the auditory centre, but in which it follows lesions 
located in the connections between the auditory and the word- 
seeing and word -hearing centres. Such a lesion interferes 
with the correlative or associative function. And it is indeed 
very suggestive of the new function found in persistent imi- 
tation, that while this latter often becomes impossible, in 
these cases, yet the simple imitative copying of sounds heard 
or movements seen, may still take place. Simple ideo- 
motor suggestion, as typified in simple imitation, remains 
intact; but persistent imitation, effort, the correlation in- 
volved in voluntary attention and movement, all this is lost. 
Janet thinks * the incapacity to feel objects by touch in cer- 
tain cases, is inversely as the degree of customary recognition 
of the objects, their uses, etc. ; which is to say, — when we 

1 Loc. cit. 



37& The Origin of Volition 

come to understand that recognition may itself be simply due 
to an attitude of tendency of attention, — that the patient's 
ability depends largely upon the degree of involuntariness of 
attention, that is, of the degree of the simple habit of attending. 

In view of what has now been said, the real difference 
between what is voluntary and what is not becomes very 
emphatic, and we have the key, I think, to the understanding 
of total aboulia, or lack of will, in cases of disease; and of 
partial aboulia, seen in the loss of particular voluntary func- 
tions, such as speech, writing, etc. 1 These matters furnish 
a further line of evidence which I shall now put forward. 

IV. Evidence from aboulia, partial or total, may now be 
brought. The general principle of mental pathology that 
the dissolution of complex functions follows the inverse order 
of their acquisition, applies to the voluntary activities in two 
ways. 

First, we should find stages of degeneration corresponding 
to the great epochs of mental development seen in the phy- 
logenetic or race series ; this would seem to require that vol- 

1 While not able to speak as an expert in Mental Pathology, I yet venture to 
express the opinion that there is only a difference of degree between the com- 
plete loss of will, the inability to make effort or to inhibit impulse, called 
aboulia, and the cases of the loss of particular voluntary functions only, — 
giving aphasia, agraphia, etc., — despite the apparent difference that, in 
these latter cases, mental determination or effort to do the act in question 
seems to be unimpaired. The patient in agraphia, it might be said, makes 
effort to write, but fails ; his will is healthy, only his handwriting fails. On 
the contrary, the function called will really gets its right to be from the 
co-ordination of simpler functions ; its stability and force must depend upon 
the support it gets from these co-ordinations of simpler functions; and the 
derangement of any one of them, such as handwriting, — unless of course 
the lesion be peripheral, — must withdraw support from the whole, and so 
weaken the function of will generally. We are all aboulic just to the degree 
in which our attentive co-ordinations are unstable and independent of one 
another. This seems to be required on any psycho-physical conception of 
will. 



Special Evidence 379 

untary action should be impaired by a less serious derange- 
ment than are simple suggestive reactions; and that the 
derangement of the ideo-motor should precede that of the 
sensori-motor. Also that these last, which involve clear 
consciousness, might be damaged or absent while reflex 
functions still remain; and that, last of all, the rhythmic, 
so-called automatic processes, which are necessary to life in 
general, might remain alone upon the field. All of these 
propositions, except the first, which concerns voluntary 
action, are such commonplaces in psychology as well as in 
physiology, that I need mention them only to give new con- 
firmation to the great features of the phylogenetic and 
ontogenetic parallelism on the side of mind. 

But, second, this progressive impairment of mental fac- 
ulty in the individual repeats inversely the process by which 
the individual himself learns his lessons in action. The man 
retrogrades literally into second childhood, both in regard to 
his power of mind as a whole, and in regard to the particular 
elements of any distinct functions which happen to be 
affected by disease or accident. 

These two cases illustrate the two. very distinct and in- 
structive phases of voluntary failure, already characterized 
as total and partial aboulia. In the former case, the impair- 
ment is general, extending to the co-ordinating function as a 
whole, and so involving each particular activity equally. The 
old man writes tremblingly, speaks falteringly, recognizes 
faces and things badly, walks haltingly, — all of which follow 
from the fact that he is able to attend only partially and 
fitfully. In partial aboulia, on the other hand, one special 
function is impaired, or more ; the rest remain intact. Here 
belong sensory aphasia, agraphia, arising from arterial obstruc- 
tions, central lesion, etc. Some particular prop to the atten- 
tion gets knocked away, and so one line of voluntary activity is 



380 The Origin of Volition 

seriously injured or destroyed ; but the co-ordination of the 
other brain seats is still intact, and their functions are weak- 
ened only to the degree in which their structure of attention 
also rested upon this prop. 

Both these cases of loss or impairment of will may be put 
in evidence as showing the place of volition in mental devel- 
opment, provided only the law be true that mind degenerates 
in the same order as it grows, only backwards ; that is, that 
the function which it acquires" latest, it loses first and most 
easily. We then have to ask what the actual facts of mental 
pathology are which show conditions of the impairment of 
will. 

Considering total aboulia first, the condition of general 
levelling down or decay of the mental faculties gives us our 
instances. There are several recognized cases of such general 
mental break-down, all involving total or progressive aboulia ; 
first, destruction of the cerebral hemispheres, corresponding to 
their removal from animals by the experimental physiolo- 
gists; second, temporary subsidence of consciousness under 
the influence of drugs, or in derangement of the vaso-motor 
mechanism, as in faintness, trance, fits, etc.; and third, 
diseases distinctly recognized as mental, such as hysteria, 
of which the universal symptoms are certain derangements of 
consciousness, enfeebled attention, remarkable perversions 
of movement, etc. To these must be added idiocy or con- 
genital mental defect. 1 Looking at each of these four cases, 
we find very evident confirmation of the view of volition 
explained in the foregoing pages. 

In the various experiments recorded of extirpation of 

1 I omit the phenomena of old age, since neither physiologists nor psy- 
chologists have given them any very fruitful study. The appearance of 
what seems to be increased power of will — self-will — in old persons, is 
perhaps due to the great strengthening of habit, together with the general 
narrowness of consciousness. 



Special Evidence 381 

the hemispheres, the phenomena now well known by the 
phrases 'psychic blindness,' ' psychic deaf ness,' etc., appear. 
These phrases are contrasted with 'cortical' blindness, 
deafness, etc. In the former, the animal loses all his sense 
of the meaning, associations, value, of what he sees and hears. 
He still sees and hears, and he still has reactions appropriate 
to sight and hearing; but he does not show the reactions 
peculiar to what he has learned, in all his life, about what he 
sees and hears. After certain operations upon his brain the 
dog sees a whip, but is no longer afraid of it ; sees food, but 
no longer moves forward to secure it ; hears a voice, but no 
longer recognizes it. What psychologists mean by * ap- 
perception' — the understanding of a thing, as opposed to the 
mere seeing or hearing of it — this is gone. The thing seen or 
heard is no longer a co-ordinated thing, built up of memories, 
varied sensations, motor dynamogenies, and pleasures or 
pains; but it is a bare, worthless stimulus to reflex or sug- 
gestive reaction. 

Lack of co-ordination? Then lack of attention, lack of 
persistence, of effort, of volition ! ' Exactly,' says the brain- 
less pigeon, 'that is what I lack.' Sustained attention, effort, 
volition — these are the correlatives of the co-ordinations 
of memories with present sensations, the motor correlatives 
of association and apperception. Lack on one side, the 
sensory, then a fortiori lack on the other, the motor. The 
motor it is, exactly, which holds the sensory elements to- 
gether. The creature shows, in fact, no complex activity, no 
curiosity, no constancy of attention, no persistence in his 
undertakings — indeed, no undertakings, no adaptation to 
new conditions. He lacks all means of taking care of him- 
self, and perishes of hunger with food under his nose. 

Now substitute men for dogs and pigeons, and substitute 
disease or drugs for the operator, and you have, in cases of 



382 The Origin of Volition 

varying clearness, cases of general progressive aboulia in man ; 
all those cases in which consciousness subsides into the depths 
of mere vague feltness, so to speak, or sensations coming in 
and movements made upon them. Two typical instances may 
be cited, the two for which we have exact observations. One 
of these is the rather obscure phenomenon of 'Jacksonian 
re-evolution,' and the other is the case, equally obscure until 
very recently, of hysteria. 

By ' re-evolution ' is meant gradual recovery from a swoon 
or fit of such a gross character that the mental faculties had 
given way, and the patient had become all but unconscious. 
It is evident that in such cases, in which the recovery is com- 
paratively slow, tests may be applied at intervals to discover 
the order in which the various functions return; this order 
will evidently represent the inverse order of their loss in the fit, 
and so the original order of their development. 

A recent case reported by Pick 1 furnishes perhaps the most 
careful and detailed observances yet made on the re-evolution 
of the function of speech — a function which, by reason of its 
complexity, lends itself to recovery by stages. Four stages 
were found in this epileptic patient's recovery from apparent 
unconsciousness : first, no response whatever to words spoken 
or written ; second, the parrot-like repetition of words heard 
(an imitative condition called echolalia; the man could strike 
a match only when he saw some one else strike one) ; third, 
a dazed sort of reply by counter-questions; and fourth, 
intelligent speech with voluntary forming of sentences. 

The evidence from such cases as this as to the place of 
volition in the evolution scale is self-evident. The first form 
of response, echolalia, is simple verbal imitation, i.e. sensori- 
motor suggestion from a brain-level below the cortex. It 
involves no extended associations. The next stage represents, 

1 Archiv jiir Psychiatrie, XXII., Heft 3, pp. 25 ff. 



Special Evidence 383 

I think, a groping of the man after unity, coherence, co- 
ordination ; just as the child gets dissatisfied with his simple 
imitations, has a sense of dawning capacity to identify, com- 
pare, and select, of a tendency to be a willing being; and 
gropes toward the next stage of development. Then comes 
the recovery of the centres and their connections. The man's 
associative channels open up and the currents flow in and out. 
He remembers his word-meanings, compares them, feels the 
proper energies tingle in lip and tongue in co-ordinate move- 
ment, and so reaches voluntary speech again. In short, 
volition in speech has come back on the basis of simple imi- 
tation, through a period of tentative trial and effort to co- 
ordinate movements. Could there be a reconstruction in 
plainer terms of the child's attainment of voluntary speech 
through imitations, tentative and then repeated ; or a plainer 
demonstration that the normal way of volition is through 
imitation ? 

The other case — the general phenomena of hysteria in 
their varied combinations — may be spoken of only in a gen- 
eral way, since the quotation of observations would be too 
lengthy. For authority, let us appeal, as before we have done, 
to Professor Pierre Janet, whose works are more psychological 
than those of most professed alienists, and who, unlike many 
of the rest, is aware that there are philosophical problems in 
the world, no less than medical. At the end of a recent dis- 
cussion of ' Definitions of Hysteria,' he concludes by himself 
defining hysteria thus : 1 " A disease especially characterized by 
mental symptoms of which the principal are enfeeblement of 
the faculty of mental synthesis; retraction of the field of 
consciousness ; the disappearance of a certain number of ele- 
mentary phenomena — called stigmata — from consciousness 

1 ' Quelques Definitions re"centes de l'Hysterie ' in Arch, de Neurologie, 
Juin et Juillet, 1893. 



384 The Origin of Volition 

and from personal perception; a tendency to the perma- 
nent and complete division of personality; the formation 
of many independent groups of phenomena ; the coexistence 
of these systems with each other or their alteration by each 
other, giving rise to crises, somnambulisms, subconscious 
actions; and finally, through the defect of synthesis, the 
formation of certain parasitic ideas whose development is so 
complete and independent that they break up all normal 
control of consciousness and manifest themselves in various 
troubles of a physical and accidental sort.' , 

From this definition and from the description of the phe- 
nomena by Charcot and other writers, we may say that the 
outstanding psychological characteristics of this sort of 
malady are: (1) ' enf eeblement of the faculty of psychic syn- 
thesis'; (2) loss of control and direction of the mental life; 
(3) the breaking up of the material of personality, and the pos- 
sible formation of several independent psychic groups, either 
successive or existing together ; (4) an enormous development 
of the tendency to imitation ; (5) the growth of mental sug- 
gestibility, tending to the complete dominion of controlling 
ideas and imperative movements, all of which contribute to a 
last characteristic — (6) general and progressive aboulia. 

Here, again, we note at once, that with enf eeblement of 
mental synthesis goes increased suggestibility, which takes 
the form, whenever possible, of direct imitation. And, fur- 
ther, we find the process of re-evolution striving to do its 
proper work in the tendency of the separate groups of psychic 
facts to take on the semblance of personality by partial 
synthesis. As James puts it, they 'tend to personal form. , 
What is this but the reverse way of mental growth, whose 
terms are in order : simple suggestion, — sensori- and ideo- 
motor, — imitation, synthesis, which last, in its various stages, 
illustrates the growing success of effort, and the growing in- 



Special Evidence 385 

dependence of the one great synthesis whose pre-eminence 
stands for stable personality and intelligent volition ? 

The absence of effort in certain cases is shown in the fact 
that the patients are often unable to learn any new move- 
ments, although they can perform, in response to a suggestion, 
those which have become habits, 1 — just the condition of the 
child before its first 'persistent' imitations. 

A further interesting confirmation of the distinction between 
voluntary and involuntary imitation is seen in the phenomena 
of unconscious writing, from which the hypothesis of 'secon- 
dary personality' gets some support. The anaesthetic hands 
of certain blindfolded patients respond in writing appro- 
priately, either in lines of habit, or by imitative repetition. 
Not only are the movements here involuntary ; they are also 
quite unconscious. 2 And the view that the attention and the 
co-ordination which it effects are the real vehicle of volition 
is shown in the negative 3 fact, that as soon as the patients are 
allowed to see the limbs in question, which they believe they 
cannot move, no response whatever from these limbs can 
be secured. This belongs to the theory of 'control' taken up 
in a later connection. 4 Furthermore, the anaesthetic hand, 
hidden behind a screen, will imitate the movements made by 
the patient voluntarily with the unanaesthetic hand, giving 

1 Janet {Ant. psy., p. 64) calls this condition, on the memory side, 'antero- 
grade amnesia' — an unfortunate phrase, I think. It is simply, so far as 
action is concerned, general ' apraxia,' or the inability to effect the synthesis 
necessary for a movement. 

2 See Binet and Fere, Arch, de Phys., 1877, II., pp. 339 ff., and 
Binet, Alterations oj Personality. 

3 Negative, i.e., to the other remarkable case of patients who cannot move 
the limbs unless they do see them. In the cases now cited, voluntary move- 
ment is impossible, and the incapacity is extended by suggestion to the invol- 
untary movements of the organ upon which the attention is fixed. For the 
other, contrasted, cases see the reference given in the next note but one. 

4 See Chap. XV., § 4, below. 

2C 



386 The Origin of Volition 

what may be called acquired 'accompanying movements. ' 1 
And yet again, the anaesthetic hand traces out, when a pencil 
is put into it, and it is left undisturbed, mental pictures as they 
exist in the subconsciousness of the owner of the hand — 
what I have called, in the case of the child, simple 'tracery- 
imitation.' The development of this tendency under the 
law of habit accounts, by the way, for all the 'intelligent' 
results of automatic writing. 

Cases of congenital mental defect, of which idiocy and 
imbecility are the extremes, teach us about the same thing. 
Weak-minded children are notably different from other chil- 
dren in two things: the difference in the character of their 
early movements, and the difference in their ability to learn 
new movements. In regard to the first point : their move- 
ments are abrupt, undisciplined, isolated from the rest of the 
organic happenings, jerky, and essentially unaccountable. 
The normal child gets disciplined by his first experiences, and 
his movements show the subduing and regulating effects of all 
kinds of suggestion. But the child which we call, in varying 
degrees, 'natural,' is not so; much that we mean by ac- 
quired nervous inhibition is wanting, and the character of the 
movements becomes at once an index of the mental state. He 
imitates, but repeats his imitations without modification. He 
lacks voluntary power both for action and for control. 

This characteristic leads at once to the second : the child 
fails to learn. He progresses as far as the natural growth of 
the organism carries him. All his senses may be perfect ; his 
vegetative processes normal; his reflexes good; his native 
reactive couples responsive. This means, in general, that he 
grows well up to the simple imitative stage ; then he stops ! 
Stops where, in the reverse process 0} unlearning, the hysteric 
and hypnotic patients stop ! He gets a few useful associations 

1 Binet and Fere, loc. cit. y pp. 340-345. 



Special Evidence 387 

drilled into him by force of habit. He may come to do the 
simpler things which he sees others do, and make the simpler 
word sounds which others make. But he does not initiate 
anything, does not learn by his own effort. He is much like 
the brainless pigeon. Idiots are generally very imitative. 
Imbeciles are lower still ; if they get any form in the sounds 
they emit, it is only what Se'glas calls i reflex echolalia.' 

I think this indicates very fairly, in these poor defec- 
tives, about the condition of things which we have found 
in cases of hysterical and cataleptic degeneracy. Here is 
the same lack of mental synthesis, so-called 'mental' blind- 
ness, deafness, dumbness, 1 the exaggeration of unruly move- 
ments, inability to acquire anything new, excessive imitation, 
general suggestibility. The idiot lacks the ' third-level ' co- 
ordination, just as all the rest do. Voluntary inhibition is 
gone, and, in a measure, involuntary inhibition also. At- 
tention is weakened, vacillating, inconstant. Hereditary 
defect has done, in this case, what disease has done in the 
other cases, i.e. it has drawn a sharp line between action 
which is imitative and simple, and action which is still imi- 
tative, but complex, — the latter alone being persistent, 
effortful, acquisitive, voluntary. These poor creatures have 
mental images, and make responses to them, but they are 
unable, in Janet's phrase, d'effectuer la synthase? 

Passing now to what has been designated partial aboulia, 
we have to consider the decay or destruction of particular 

1 The expression 'mental dumbness' was suggested by the present writer 
for the inability to speak intelligently, as opposed to the mere ability to 
imitate sounds. See the article, ' Internal Speech and Song,' Philos. Review, 
II., 1893, p. 389. See also, below, Chap. XIV., § i, p. 415. 

2 The characteristics of the idiot's movements are given by Guicciardi, 
Zeitsch. jiir Psychologie, IV., p. 154, as, in order, progressive inco-ordination 
of voluntary movement, loss of voluntary movement, increased imitation. 



388 The Origin of Volition 

motor functions, asking whether, if we apply the law that 
the order of loss is the inverse of that of development, we 
find evidence for our theory of the rise of volition. This 
examination can best be made in connection with complex 
functions or acquisitions, and speech and handwriting at 
once suggest themselves. I accordingly have to cite evidence 
from aphasia and agraphia. Other functions which do not 
involve so clearly the complex, co-ordinations learned by 
voluntary effort may also be cited in their place as we proceed. 

It may be well to give, at the outset, the general result of 
the detailed examination of cases of such troubles. The 
order of acquisition of the elements of speech and hand- 
writing is this : 1 first, in the stage of suggestive reaction 
before the rise of conscious imitation, we find hearing of 
sounds with some very simple associations, also suggestive 
adaptation of movements of the tongue, hands, etc., under 
the direct stimulus of associations, pleasures, and pains, 
etc.; second, in the stage of simple imitation, we find full 
recognition of objects and musical tunes, some slight power 
of song in individual children, imperfect articulation, in- 
creasing co-ordination of movements, though still without 
effort or volition ; third, in the epoch of persistent imitation, 
we find full understanding of speech, the rapid acquisition of 
co-ordinated movements in speaking and writing, and also 
visual sign interpretation which leads on to the ability to 
read. 

On the side of disease, therefore, we should expect, if 
the acquisition proceeds by stages so well marked, that at 
least the same three great types of function would be reason- 
ably independent in their loss. That is, we should find that 
the highest type of function, revealed in volition and conscious 
synthesis, would in some cases be lost alone, and that to its 
1 Cf. the left column in Table X. 



Special Evidence 389 

loss might then be added that of the function which corresponds 
to perception and simple imitative adaptation. Finally, in the 
most fundamental derangement of all, even the degree of 
acquisition represented by direct imitation and reflex speech, 
etc., should be impaired along with the two higher kinds. 

Our expectations are so clearly fulfilled in current inter- 
pretations of defects in the active life, 1 that the very nomen- 
clature of the subject gives us words for these very distinc- 
tions. Loss of the first type is called, as we have seen, 
psychic blindness, deafness, etc., according as one sense or 
another is affected, issuing in associative ataxia or aphasia. 
The term dyslogia has been applied to this state by Seglas. 
It has equal application to various functions, but applies 
especially to speech. The second stage has had, if not 
equally general recognition, equally .happy characterization 
by the same author, who calls defects of speech of this general 
nature dysphasia. It is aphasia of the sensory or motor type, 
due to the loss of a specific kind of sensory or motor memory 
through a lesion in a specific centre. Finally, the greatest 
defect of speech is dyslalia, or aphasia due to lesions in the 
lower centres. 

We may now, before going into more detail, draw up a 
table showing these functions, and the corresponding defects 
of the three great classes described, using the terms current 
for the function of speech, but bearing in mind the general 
application of the divisions themselves to complex motor 
acquisitions in general. See Table X. 

The main point in discussion — the origin of Volition — 
is isolated in the question as to the distinction between 
dyslogia and dysphasia. The question is this: Do we find 
that whenever the mind is impaired to the degree designated, 
in respect of special acts, by the phrase amnesia, — the loss 

1 Cf. the right column in Table X. 



390 



The Origin of Volition 



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Special Evidence 391 

of some function demanding spontaneous co-ordinated 
memories, and action in view of such co-ordinated memo- 
ries, — effective volitions are then impaired, while purely 
sensori-motor action remains? In other words, do these 
kinds of aphasia — speaking of speech in particular — show 
a functional line between persistent effort and simple imita- 
tion? 

In support of the truthfulness of the exhibit from pathol- 
ogy made in the table I may make certain observations : — 

Among the numerous schematic diagrams which have 
been proposed to illustrate aphasia in its different forms, 
that of Lichtheim has had most recognition. 1 It is not my 
purpose to add to these constructions, which have represented, 
in part at least, the individual interpretations of the particular 
writers. The 'motor square' which has been found service- 
able in the preceding sections, presents a modification of 
Lichtheim's scheme in the one direction in which current 
psychology finds some of its most important problems; and 
it thus enables us to bring the problems to aphasia into con- 
nection with general psychological theory. Lichtheim's dia- 
gram, Fig. XVII., a., gives no means of distinguishing between 
the centre of muscular sensations and memories, the kines- 
thetic centre, on one side, and the true motor centre, the 
innervation centre, on the other side; but includes both, 
under the one symbol M. In my 'motor square' diagram, 
Fig. XVII., b., these two possibly distinct areas, and perfectly 
distinct functions, are distinguished (mc and mp), thus 
making it possible to represent, diagrammatically, a distinc- 
tion current in psychology. The distinction is required in 
the interpretation of cases of aphasia. Lichtheim himself 
admits this, and constructs an awkward supplement to his 

1 Brain, Part XXVIII., January, 1885, p. 436 (his Fig. 1). 



392 The Origin of Volition 

diagram when he comes to interpret certain individual cases. 1 
If the 'motor square' be squeezed together, so that the oppo- 
site corners, mc and mp, coincide, it then becomes identical 
with Lichtheim's. The isolation of mp, however, is required 
by all the evidence now accumulated, which goes to show 
that movements may be stimulated directly from the sensory 
centres (sg; sight, hearing, etc.), or directly from the higher 
co-ordinating centre (cc, Lichtheim's B) — supposing it to 
exist, as all the diagrams, interpreting the facts functionally, 





mc 



a. Scheme of Lichtheim. b. Motor Square.* 

Fig. XVII. 

represent — without necessary stimulation of the kinesthetic 
cortical centre (mc). This class of cases, now very generally 
accepted, has no separate recognition, I think, in any of the 
schemes except the 'motor square.' 

Interpreting the 'motor square' in terms of the three 
great functional classes of motor acquisitions, we may say 

1 Loc. cit., pp. 437, 443, 451 (his Figs. 2, 4, 5). 

2 For the other symbols, see Fig. IX. My use of this diagram, before I 
saw Lichtheim's, in class-room demonstration of the 'motor' problems in 
psychology, has proved it so convenient that I have ventured to print it in 
my text-books. Most of the diagrams proposed by others are intended to 
illustrate the different sensory areas which contribute to speech (Charcot's, 
Kussmaul's in Storungen der Sprache, p. 182, etc.) ; these centres are all 
bunched in Lichtheim's and mine, the purpose being to illustrate types of 
motor disturbance, rather than particular local lesions. 



Special Evidence 393 

that aboulia, and the equivalent dyslogia, result from some 
disturbance in cc, or its connections, whereby this co-ordi- 
nating centre (Lichtheim's Begrifjscentrum, B) is cut off, 
either (1), from the motor discharge centre mp, for the par- 
ticular function in question, or (2), from the centres (sg) 
from which the stimulus or material of co-ordination comes. 
All the varieties of amnesia fall under (2), in so far as the 
particular memory pictures whose absence constitutes the 
amnesia observed, are necessary to the concentration of at- 
tention by which the voluntary performance of the action 
in question is brought about. That is, it is possible that a 
particular case of inability to employ intelligent speech may 
be due, apart from injury to cc, to a lesion which breaks any 
of the three connections cc, mp; cc, sg, mp; or cc, mc, mp. 
The other case (1) includes instances in which the failure to 
speak is due to lack of ability to get the attention fixed upon 
anything which would represent the movement itself apart 
from both kinesthetic impressions and special sense memories. 
Such cases are cited in proof of innervation sensations and 
memories due to the condition of the motor discharge centre 
itself. 1 

The other cases of possible lesion in this highest region, 
involving aboulia only, represent respectively sensory amnesic 
aphasia of the several kinds known as visual, auditory, etc., 
and motor amnesic aphasia. It is evident that a break in 
the line cc, sg would accomplish both of these ; that is, the 
patient would be unable to speak voluntarily, however he 
might preserve all his special centres, both sensory and motor. 

1 So Waller's region (Brain, XIV., p. 179, and XV., pp. 380 ff.), which is 
called by him the 'locus' of subjective as well as objective fatigue, would, if 
cut off from its connection with the co-ordinating centre, produce aphasia, 
even when the kinesthetic sensation series were all intact. This possibility, 
whatever we may think of its probability, it is impossible to represent on 
Lichtheim's or any other of the earlier diagrams. 



394 The Origin of Volition 

This is the case where a patient is unable to speak or write 
spontaneously, although he can repeat or write words which 
he hears or sees, written or printed (using the line mc, mp 
or sg, mp). It is possible, however, since the symbol sg 
represents the various sensory seats taken together, that a 
function like speech might in some cases not be impaired 
when a particular connection cc, sg is cut, since the attention 
might be stimulated by a discharge from an alternative sen- 
sory seat. This alternative arrangement gives its validity to 
the distinction between the so-called types of speech, as 
auditory, visual, motor, etc. 

It is evident, therefore, that a certain very important 
class of functions would be left to a man of such partial 
aboulia. First, he might be able to perform a voluntary 
function when his attention was supplied with some indirect 
stimulus : so the cases in which voluntary movement is pos- 
sible only when the eyes are open. Or, second, he might be 
able to perform other voluntary co-ordinations in which the 
particular class of memories now cut off are not essential 
elements; and third, he might be able to perform, reflexly 
or by suggestion, imitation, etc., functions which he could not 
perform voluntarily. 

All of these deductions respecting aboulic patients are 
securely established by pathological facts. The last-men- 
tioned is the critical distinction for our purposes, and some 
cases illustrating it may be cited. They are selected with 
two especial points in view: first, as showing the fact of 
conscious simple imitation in patients to whom all effortful 
performance of the actions had become impossible; and, 
second, as showing the inability of such patients to learn 
again the function which is lost, without resorting to a 
painstaking repetition by imitation of a new kind of 
motor association. By this means such a patient may train 



Special Evidence 395 

his attention over again upon a new class of memory 
images. 

1. Case of Pick already cited. 1 This man was able to 
strike a match only when he saw the proper movements of 
another (pp. 764 and 768). He echoed words he heard, 
and he even repeated with the questioning inflection ques- 
tions addressed to himself (pp. 568-569 and 771-773); but 
he had lost all spontaneous speech. Pick interprets the case 
(p. 774) as one of 'transcortical word -deafness' described by 
Lichtheim and Wernicke, which arises from a lesion of the 
line BM in Lichtheim's diagram, or of the line cc, sg in the 
'motor square.' It is a case of verbal amnesic aphasia, or 
dyslogia involving aboulia, but not dysphasia. 

2. Case of Pitres, 2 showing agraphia, in which 'tracery- 
imitation' remained. This case also shows the possible 
mutual isolation of speech and writing, inasmuch as there 
was no aphasia. Here we have a lesion of the tract cc, sg 
(Lichtheim's BM) for writing movements only, the lesion not 
extending to the corresponding tracts for speech movements. 

3. A different complication is shown in another case cited 
by Ross, 3 in which deep-seated aphasia (dysphasia) is asso- 
ciated with alexia, without agraphia. This patient's speech 
movements were probably dependent upon the visual word 
centre for stimulation, while his writing movements were not 
so dependent ; consequently alexia (lesion of the visual word 
centre) carried with it amnesic aphasia, but not agraphia. 

4. Case cited by Lichtheim. 4 It shows the preservation 
of a variety of simple imitative or ideo-motor suggestive re- 
actions, while the corresponding voluntary functions were 

1 Archiv fur Psychiatrie, XXII., Heft 3. 

2 Cited by Ross, Wood's Medical Monographs, Vol. VI., No. 1, 1890, 
pp. 152-153. 

3 Ibid., pp. 197-199. 

* Brain, VII., 1891, p. 437. 



396 The Origin of Volition 

lost. The patient could copy handwriting, write to dicta- 
tion, repeat words heard, and read aloud, but he could not 
write nor speak spontaneously. It is accordingly a case of 
amnesic aphasia and agraphia, involving loss of the volun- 
tary functions only. This case is a very fine illustration of 
my thesis, inasmuch as it shows the action of the principle 
of Habit, whereby activities at first learned by persistent 
effort have become ideo-motor, so that it is only their volun- 
tary performance, and the ability to learn more, which are im- 
paired by the injury. 

Again there are cases which show a finer application still 
of the law of Habit, in connection with each of the functions 
of voluntary movement. It is impossible to say beforehand 
just how much or how little of what is, as a whole, an action 
learned by imitative effort still involves voluntary control at 
any time. A great part of any one of our habitual actions 
is regularly under subcortical or ideo-motor control, except 
for inhibitions or unusual exercises of it. 

We find that speech, for example, is subject to a great 
many finer degrees of impairment. Sentence-making may 
be impossible, while the words taken alone may be spoken. 
Words again may be impossible, while the simple syllabic 
sounds may be quite possible. Certain classes of words, 
as nouns and names, may disappear, while other classes of 
words remain. And finally, all that the patient may be 
capable of is some single oft-repeated sound. 1 In all this 
we see reversed the child's progress from simple imitation 
of sounds, to effortful repetition, then to the co-ordination 
of sounds or syllables into words, then to imitations of short 

1 See Kussmaul, Storungen der Sprache, pp. 9 and 164. Also Bateman, 
On Aphasia, p. 75. Ribot traces this progress, as a phenomenon of memory, 
Maladies de la Memoire, pp. 132 ff. ; cf. Brazier, Revue Philosophique, 
October, 1892, p. 364. 



Special Evidence 397 

sentences which he hears, and finally to spontaneous com- 
binations of his own to express his meaning. 

A similar series of facts is found also in agraphia, or de- 
rangements of writing; stages in which there are, in order, 
certain defects becoming more and more grave. There is 
trembling handwriting, failure to write sentences, when cer- 
tain words can still be written ; failure to write words, while 
musical notation, or single letters, or both, may still be writ- 
ten ; failure to write letters, while figures l may still be written ; 
failure to write anything except to dictation ; 2 and finally, 
failure to write at "all without copies, although copies may 
still be traced. Here is retrogression from the highest co- 
ordination of hand movements, down to the tracery-imita- 
tion already described ; 3 the final stage being that in which 
meaningless scrawls show the absence of all central co- 
ordination. 4 

So in the case of alexia, or impairment of reading; a 
function which may be destroyed without impairing either 
speech or writing. 5 It may extend to the reading of hand- 
writing only (even the patient's own 8 ) ; or to reading of 
music notation only ; 7 or to all printing and handwriting 
except numerical figures ; 8 or to all but drawings and out- 
lines of objects; or to all signs except music notation; or, 
finally, to all interpretation of visual signs; in which case 



1 Case of Dejerine, Com. Rend. Soc. de Biologie, Feb. 27, 1892; cf. Brain, 
1893, p. 318. 

3 Lichtheim's case, Brain, VII., p. 447. s Above, Chap. V. 

4 See Starr's case, Medical Record (N.Y.), XXXIV., 1888, p. 500. 

6 Alexia without agraphia is rare; but see the remarkable case of Dejerine 
cited in the second note above. Agraphia came on subsequently in conse- 
quence of a second lesion found at the autopsy. 

6 Oppenheim, Charite Annalen, XVII. 

7 Ballet, quoted by Wallaschek. 

8 See Glashey's case, Archiv jiir Psychiatrie, XVI., 1885, p. 66i. 



398 The Origin of Volition 

only simple sensations of sight remain, and the patient 
reaches the condition called psychic blindness. 1 

Recent observations show a corresponding analysis by 
disease of the faculty of musical expression. The power of 
playing on instruments, or singing by note, may be lost, 
while familiar selections may still be executed from memory ; 
and, when the disease has developed further, an air becomes 
impossible from memory, but may still be executed by the 
imitation of another's performance. 2 Oppenheim cites the 
case of a patient who could not sing until the words of a 
familiar song were spoken to him, 3 although he could not 
repeat the words; and Franckl cites the case of a patient 
with right-sided hemiplegia, agraphia, alexia, and aphasia to 
the extent of echolalia, who yet sang one song, but without 
the words. 4 These last two cases 5 illustrate purely sugges- 
tive or automatic singing. 6 

The connection between speech and music which has been 
spoken of above, 7 may also be serviceable in another way. 
Patients have been reported who could speak only by singing 
the words. In such cases they may be able thus to understand 
the words, 8 or even yet not to understand them. The latter 
illustrates the reflex or suggestive movements of speech, which 

1 Cf. the analysis into five stages of defect in reading, by Weissenberg 
Archiv fur Psychiatrie, XXII., 1891, p. 442. 

2 See Brazier, loc. cit., and Case 3 of Oppenheim, Charite Annalen, XIII., 
1888, p. 354, quoted by Wallaschek, Zeitschrijt fur Psychologie, Vol. VI., p. 8. 

3 Loc. cit., XIII., p. 358; cf. also Wallaschek, loc. cit., p. 12. 

4 Franckl-Hochwart, Deutsch. Zeitsch. fur Nervenheilkunde, 1891, I., 
p. 287. 

5 See also another of Oppenheim's (a man who could not read, but yet 
sang off correctly a printed musical score), loc. cit., p. 364 ; and yet another, 
of a boy who sang a tune in his eleventh month, before he learned to speak 
(Wallaschek, loc. cit., p. 13). 

6 See my own case above, Chap. VI., § 5, ad fin. 

7 Chap. IV., § 2. 

8 Case referred to by Starr, Psychological Review, I., 1894, p. 92. 



Special Evidence 399 

may be stimulated through the centre of the understanding of 
music, whether it be visual or auditory. Gowers accounts 
for this latter case by the observation that the text, in musical 
execution, is simply a convenience, not an essential, and the 
meaning of the words is, in learning, entirely subordinated 
to the correct music. 1 It is again essential to remark here, — 
in order to keep our argument clearly in view, — that there 
may be aboulia for musical execution, leaving reflex or imi- 
tative execution intact ; but that in such cases no new musical 
acquisitions can be made. 2 

V. Still another class of facts may be cited as affording 
evidence in favour of this view of the rise of volition ; the 
facts of brain development, as comparative embryology and 
early brain anatomy supply them. Two very general ques- 
tions arise in view of our present topic : we are interested to 
know, first, what kind of motor apparatus the child is born 
with ; and, second, in what order he adds to his motor equip- 
ment in the way of activities which may be described as vol- 
untary. In answer to the first question, we may say without 
hesitation that the child begins life without the necessary ap- 
paratus for any voluntary action whatever. He lacks two 



1 Diseases of the Brain, 1885, p. 122. 

2 The final loss of the imitative function as involved in gesture, general 
movement, etc. (so-called amimia; see Kussmaul, loc. tit., pp. 159 ff., and 
Ballet, loc. tit., p. 75), and its amnesic phase need not be dwelt upon. Amimia 
reduces the patient to the stage of pre-imitative suggestion, again confirming 
the reverse parallel between order of acquisition and order of loss. A case 
recently reported by Mills in Philada. Hosp. Reports, 1893, brings out the 
facts clearly. A patient, having right hemiplegia and motor aphasia, with- 
out word-deafness, lost all expression by movements of any kind, except that 
he uttered 'la-la' over and over, and could still laugh when pleased. The 
expressive movements which he retained longest — apart from those men- 
tioned — were the 'nod' and 'shake' of head to signify 'yes' and 'no.' As 
we would expect, facial expression usually remains intact, even in cases of 
amimia which involves all voluntary pantomime, gesture, etc. 



400 The Origin of Volition 

very important, indeed essential, things : associative connec- 
tions between the lower central organs and the cortex, with 
all traces of medullated nerve fibre ; and, second, his cere- 
brum has not developed the different local centres and 
their connections with one another. So far there is no 
dispute. 1 

In regard to the second inquiry, — the time and order of 
development of complete activities, — experimental evi- 
dence is largely lacking and anatomical evidence is notoriously 
uncertain. Putting the anatomical evidence, however, with 
that of comparative physiology, we see ground to justify us 
in the position that volition is a matter of cortical co-ordina- 
tion, occurring possibly about the sixth to eighth month, 
after simple imitation has become common and varied. It 
should be borne in mind, however, — lest this seem like 
special pleading, in view of the very scanty evidence at hand, 
— that it is not a question here of what is the true hypothesis, 
but of what alternatives may be true. 

The main facts now known may be thrown together very 
briefly. Soltmann 2 found that young dogs did not respond 
to stimulation of the cortical motor centres until nine days 
old, i.e. until two days after the eyes were open; then the 
reaction came first only from the fore paw. The same re- 
sults were shown by looking for laming in the dog's move- 
ments after extirpation of the motor centres. Further, Solt- 
mann, in considering the analogies of structure, finds volun- 
tary action in the child beginning from the middle to the end 
of the first quarter-year, and that it develops first for the arm, 
then hand, and last for the leg (the dog's hind paw was quite 
lawless — regellos — in its responses to stimulation as late 
as the sixth month). These deductions are accepted by 

1 Foster, Preyer, Bastian, Soltmann, Meynert. 

2 Jahrbuch fur Kinder heilkunde, IX., 1875, pp. 115 ff. 



Special Evidence 401 

Vierordt. 1 Further, Soltmann finds that the child does not 
get the eyelid-touch reflex, which is a cortical reflex, till its 
seventh or eighth week. 

Again, authorities have shown that the composition of the 
brain is not favourable to cortical action until the seventh 
month. The nerve sheath is absent in the brain, the quantity 
of water is very large as compared with the later brain con- 
dition, 2 the necessary fibres have not developed between the 
motor cortex and the striate bodies (Vierordt), and certain 
cells then undergo changes making them comparable to the 
voluntary cells. 3 Meynert 4 has found further lack of prepa- 
ration in the nerve courses of voluntary action in the human 
infant of four months. As to the difference between the young 
dog and the human infant, Ferrier says, in discussing Solt- 
mann's results, "The degree of development and control over 
movements which a puppy reaches in ten days or a fortnight 
are not attained by the human infant under a year or more." 5 
Further, if we suppose that in the child, as in the dog, the 
sight function is the first to develop its connections suffi- 
ciently to stimulate to voluntary action, we may fall back 
upon the researches of Flechsig, showing that fibres from the 
sight centres in the occipital cortex do not begin to appear 
in the child until the second or third month. Bernheim 
quotes Parrot to the effect that the nervous apparatus is not 
entirely ready for voluntary action until toward the end of 
the ninth month. 

However uncertain some of these detailed observations 
and deductions may be, it is nevertheless easy to strike fair 

1 Vierordt's Lehrbuch der Kinderkrankheiten, Bd. I., p. 420. 

2 Wiesbach, Archiv fur Psychiatrie, II., III. 

s Jastrowicz, Parrot (Arch, de Physiologic, I., 530 ff.), Virchow. 

* Cited by Soltmann, loc. cit. 

6 Functions of the Brain, 2d edition, p. 364. 

2D 



402 The Origin of Volition 

limits inside of which we may say conclusions are safe. Let 
us say, therefore, all allowances being made for differences 
between man and dog, and for errors of observation, that 
voluntary action in the child arises and develops to perfection 
gradually, in connection with single functions separately, 
between about the fifth and ninth months; that the hand 
becomes first capable of voluntary use, and that its use occurs 
first in connection with stimulation through the eye. 

Even with this very modest outcome, we find several in- 
teresting side-lights upon our results already arrived at in 
earlier connections. 

i. Volition seems to come about the time of advent of sug- 
gestive reactions of the consciously imitative kind. 

2. It arises first in connection with the sight-hand -move- 
ment reaction, a result which we have already had reason to 
anticipate. This seems to give some justification both to the 
use of the hand in connection with eye stimulations of colour, 
etc., in the 'dynamogenic method' of study which we have 
been pursuing, and also to the view that sight (with hearing) 
goes ahead of the other senses in stimulating to the higher 
co-ordinating processes of the organism. This means, in 
my jargon, that they are the avenues of greatest progress and 
attainment in the 'circular' form of reaction, the ' organic 
imitation,' by which accommodation comes about. So it is 
no accident that they are the most imitative of the senses, 
when imitation becomes conscious. 

3. It is interesting to note that we found that the tendency 
to use the right. hand more than the left began (allowing for 
the differences in children) about the sixth to the eighth month. 
Comparing this with the result given above, that the arm gets 
ready for voluntary use before any other member, and about the 
seventh month, it seems possible to surmise that one motor 
arm centre gets started before the other, and more vigorously, 



Special Evidence 403 

in its preparation for voluntary action ; and that the use of 
the right hand in preference to the left is evidence, at this first 
stage, of just this preparation going on in the left hemisphere. 
As the speech function follows this up pretty closely, begin- 
ning to be slightly voluntary in the shape of verbal imitations 
about the eighth or ninth month, the idea we had earlier, 
that voluntary speech proceeds upon an earlier predominant 
dextral function, gets, at any rate, no contradiction. 1 

VI. I need not take much space to point out, as a final 
piece of evidence, that the hypnotic condition shows a line 
drawn, in a most unmistakable way, just between imitation 
which is suggestion under the reign of habit, and imitation 
which involves accommodation and volition. The theory of 
hypnotism now most widely current, under the name of the 
'suggestion theory,' amounts to a direct recognition of 
the fact that the somnambule is an abnormally good 
imitator. Spontaneity, synthesis, self-direction, these are 
gone; but these are volition. The somnambule never 
learns anything new. He is always satisfied with what 
he imitates. His critical attitudes, his criteria of belief, 
are all taken from him. The careful examination of the facts 
of hypnosis, with the view of volition now advanced, in mind, 
will convince any one, I think, that the line of division 
between suggestion and volition is where we have placed it. 

And the limits of the somnambule' s suggestibility show the 
way out of his dilemma very plainly; the way nature has 

1 It is interesting to know that both Soltmann found with young dogs and 
v. Gudden with a young rabbit, that the motor centre of one hemisphere may 
control both the right and the left limb in the first two months or more. 
Soltmann kept a young dog alive a number of weeks after its left fore leg 
centre had been removed, and succeeded in getting movements of both the 
fore paws by stimulating the proper centre in the right hemisphere. Such 
double contraction from stimulating one side failed with a grown dog, as it 
commonly does in other instances. Soltmann, loc. cit., pp. 1 28-131. 



404 The Origin of Volition 

actually taken in the development of the child and in the 
series of animal forms. When the suggested course comes 
into hard collision with the root-habits, sentiments, realities, 
of his nature, — his modesty, his veracity, his self-interests, — 
then he may be aroused to a kind of hesitation. He delays, 
avoids, perhaps refuses to act upon the suggestion. This 
reproduces exactly the condition in the child's consciousness 
which we have called 'deliberative suggestion.' 1 The child 
has to reconcile seeming irreconcilables, to violate his nature 
sometimes. And it is just in the stress of such issues among 
the suggestive influences that move him, that he gets the higher 
form of conscious plurality of motives which his volition goes 
out to unite in one. 

§ 5. Variations in the Rise 0} Volition: S el j -imitation 

It is now time to ask whether the requisites to volition in 
the child may arise in another way than by the imitation of 
external movements, sounds, etc. 

We find present, indeed, in the child certain congenital 
tendencies which have arisen in the process of development — 
tendencies to act in certain ways, to pursue certain classes of 
objects, to be satisfied with certain gratifications, and to urge 
himself toward them. The case of volition is not narrowed 
down, as would seem to be the case in the typical instance 
figured above, 2 which seems in effect to make the child ready 
for all suggestions which come, and equally ready for all. 
On the contrary, he has appetites, instincts, impulses ; and it 
would not be surprising if we should find that these may pre- 
cipitate him before the time into a certain unready choice 
or a certain conflict of choices. 

Moreover, the principle of 'organic imitation' has shown 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 3. 3 Fig. XIV., p. 377. 



Variations in the Rise of Volition 405 

us that the rise of memory and imagination is the direct out- 
come of the need which confronts the organism of meeting 
its stimulations halfway: the organism comes to reinstate 
within consciousness, on occasion, through the development 
of its central cortical processes, certain elements which we 
call memories, pictures, thoughts, without waiting for the 
stimulations outside. If it be true that memories and imagi- 
nations differ from perceptions only in the fact that they are 
'away' from external nature and not dependent upon its 
present objects, then why may not all the motor consequences 
which were at first associated with the objects follow from the 
images simply? 

If we put these two things together, namely, organized 
habits of action in particular ways, and the motor force of 
memories as prompting, by their dynamogenic influence, to 
the repetition of the reactions with which they themselves 
are joined — then we have the possibility of volition with- 
out overt imitation of external events, and possibly earlier 
than the time of the first such imitations, i.e. by self- 
imitation. 

In certain instances clearly present in children, the facts 
are simple, and show three cases : either, first, the child simply 
remembers something and aims to imitate it ; or, second, the 
synthesis or co-ordination demanded for volition is really 
present, as our scheme in Fig. XIV. demands, but one of the 
motor tendencies involved is a special native tendency; its 
stimulus is organic. And when a new stimulation comes to 
excite a movement in conflict with the one prescribed by na- 
ture, then there is all the complexity of volition. A subtle 
inner controversy arises and the child has to settle it, quite 
subconsciously perhaps, by a choice which is voluntary. Or 
third, both — all — the tendencies may be native, but one 
of them modified by experience, reflection, etc., into a partial 



406 The Origin of Volition 

conflict with others, so that effort arises in the solution of the 
case for action. 

The first case may be illustrated by any volition aimed at 
a memory, and bringing out the movement which reinstates 
the sensations which the memory stands for. My child 
persistently reaching for a colour and then moving nearer to 
get it, illustrates this case; or H. dragging a table-cloth in 
her seventh month to bring my bunch of keys within reach. 
She remembers the movements necessary and makes them 
voluntarily for an end — movements she had before found out 
by accident, or had seen some one else make. She strives to 
reproduce the sensations of movement and with them the 
touch of the keys by just the circular process of imitation, 
except that it starts in the memory centre instead of in eye or 
ear. 

The second case has interesting illustrations too: a con- 
flict brought about between a native impelling instinct on one 
hand, and a suggested course on the other. Many direct 
modifications of instinct arise in this way, the inhibition of 
sobbing and crying, the self-denial of not reaching for at- 
tractive things, all responses, to parent or companion, which 
conflict with spontaneous tendency, and then consciously 
master it. These are voluntary, in the transition sense, just 
in so far as there is motor duality or conflict, resolved 
consciously and by effort into a motor unity, which effects a 
repetition of the one reaction or the other. 

And still more deep-going is the third class of these so-called, 
in our developmental phraseology, ' phylogenetic imitations/ 
which show the clash of nature against itself. We have seen 
the lower form of it in 'deliberative suggestion' ; 1 suggestion 
locking horns with suggestion, and then — the outcome, to 
tell us which is victorious. A corresponding state of things 

1 Above, Chap. VI., § 3. 



Variation in the Rise of Volition 407 

occurs on a higher scale, at the cortical level, when we feel 
two alternatives so strongly and consent to one of them, by 
seeming to ourselves not to choose it at all. It simply chooses 
itself, and we stand and wonder. So the child often acts 
voluntarily when it is practically blind to pros and cons, when 
the whole complex condition is made up of elements so 
characteristic and strenuous for utterance, that allowance or 
recognition is all he has to do. The child's early moral 
decisions are of this kind, I think. The ought, the right, 
simply represents a growing habit, his nature coming to feel 
what it ought to be by what it is getting to be, in the midst 
of crying imperative appetites and suggestions. He acts 
voluntarily for the right, let us say ; but who can say that his 
choice is in every case in any real sense intended beforehand ? 
It is interesting to note, further, under this head, an in- 
stance of what is to be spoken of again as the 'interaction 
of habit and accommodation.' We find volition brought out 
on occasion of imitation, a higher kind of imitation called 
'persistent,' in which the child does not rest content with 
the degree of success his old reactions provide, but aims 'to 
try again' for better things. Now the imitative instinct itself 
is thus, in this transition, brought to the bar, and violated by 
its own passage into volition. In volition, the agency of the 
actor comes to instruct him. He learns his power to resist 
and to conquer, as well as his weakness and subjection to a 
copy. And the child comes, just in this conflict between 
imitation, an instinct, and suggestion, an innovation, to 
break through and make himself an inventor, and a free 
agent. In fact, we have found a type of action realized in 
the phrase ' contrary ' or ' wayward ' suggestion, in which just 
this revolt becomes a way of action. The boy won't imitate. 
This simply means that he won't imitate what other people 
ask him to, but prefers to imitate what he asks himself to. 



408 The Origin of Volition 

He imitates just the same, of course. But the difference is 
world-wide. Such a 'contrary' boy has learned the lesson of 
volition, has passed from suggestion to conduct, has mounted 
from the second to the third level, and is available for genius- 
material. 1 

I have said enough now to show that the rise of volition 
is but another illustration of the one law of motor develop- 
ment. It is the form that the process of accommodation 
takes on when the central processes become complex. 

1 The great question of invention versus imitation — how can any one be 
original if even volition and thought be imitative functions ? — is treated in 
Chaps. III.-V., of the later volume, Social and Ethical Interpretations. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The Mechanism of Revival: Internal Speech and 

Song 

The facts of memory and imagination, now broadly dis- 
cussed, are capable of closer description, when we come to 
the analysis of consciousness itself. Each function which 
has its external habit-aspect in the action of the person, has 
also its internal habit-aspect in the movements among the 
elements of content in the mind, which go to make up our 
'stream of thought.' A 'cross-section' of the stream at any 
moment will contain the elements in consciousness which 
stand for the activities going on, or tending to go on, in the 
bodily mechanism. And each such element must have its 
reason for being in the laws of assimilation, association, and 
thought, already briefly put in evidence. 

I shall attempt to show this in more detail by analyzing 
two so-called 'expressive' functions, both of which are most 
interesting in themselves, and both of which have had great 
light thrown upon them in later years: speech and song. 
The aim shall be, not to give detailed descriptions of the 
execution of speech and music, but to show what is actually 
in consciousness at the time of any such execution, and how 
just this came to be in consciousness. 

§ i. Internal Speech: How do we think of Words? 

An important advance has been made in late years in the 
purely psychological doctrine of memory and imagination. 

409 



41 o The Mechanism of Revival 

The old psychology held that all individuals were alike as 
regards the brain centres for the memory of particular things 
and for the performance of particular actions. It has been 
shown, however, by pathological cases and by analysis as well, 
that we are not alike. Several distinct so-called 'types' have 
been discovered — persons who depend mainly on one sense 
for their memories, and on the memories of this sense mainly 
for the necessary release of voluntary energy into the muscu- 
lar combinations used in performing particular actions. The 
analysis of the speech function has been so brilliant, that I 
may explain it more in detail, as illustrating the general 
principle of ' types,' upon which, as I think, the true theory 
of the rise and development of attention must be based. 

The doctrine of brain function in speech is now pretty 
clear — thanks to the teaching, principally, of pathological 
cases. Normal speech is a function which probably involves 
several so-called 'brain centres,' all in dynamic connection 
with one another. Given a man with the physical appara- 
tus of the act of speaking intact — vocal organs, nerve con- 
nections, and brain seat of discharge (Broca's gyre) — and 
ask why such a man speaks, the answer may take several 
forms. He may name a word sign which he has seen, or 
repeat a word sound which he has heard, or tell the words 
he has written, or finally, he may speak a word simply from 
the habit of speaking it — from the tendency of his speech 
apparatus to operate as it has operated before. Now we 
ordinarily generalize this diversity in the case in which the 
man 'thinks' the word merely, without speaking it, by say- 
ing that the word is 'in his mind,' internal, interieur; but 
the question is : What is in his mind ? — the printed word 
(visual image), the spoken word (auditory), the written word 
(hand-motor), the articulate word (speech-motor) — is it all 
of these? Is it any of them? 



Internal Speech 411 

If we agree to call the motor centre for speech (mp of 
Fig. XVII., b, above) the 'intrinsic' seat of stimulation to 
the organs of speech, and, on the other hand, to call the 
other centres pointed out 'extrinsic,' the question now cur- 
rent runs: Are these extrinsic centres capable, each for 
itself, of arousing the speech centre ; or does one of them, 
the centre for sensations and memories of actual movement, 
the ' kinesthetic ' word centre (wc, of the same figure), always 
stand between the motor seat and the other sensory centres ? 

Or, put psychologically, do we, when we remember words 
and speak them, always recall them in terms of the sensa- 
tions of movement involved in speaking or writing them ; or 
is it possible to speak simply from remembering the visual 
form of the word, or its sound? Is the kinesthetic centre, 
with the memories of movement to which its processes cor- 
respond, intrinsic or extrinsic? 

The view that verbal memories are always motor, or 
kinesthetic, is associated with the name of Strieker. 1 Recent 
results have refuted Strieker. A variety of facts have been 
adduced to show that the function of speech is not dependent 
in all cases upon the possibility of reinstating motor ex- 
periences; although in some cases it is, for patients are re- 
ported who could not speak unless they first traced the words 
with hand or pen. 2 Many of these facts are already common 
property; but a few of the recent points on this side of the 
discussion are these : (1) Cases are cited of verbal hallucina- 
tion, in which the patient hears two or more voices, one of 
which he takes to be his own, the other that of some one 

1 Strieker, Ueber die Bewegungsvorstellungen, Ueber die Association der 
Vorstellungen, Ueber die Sprachvorstellungen, Langage et Musique. See also 
G. E. Miiller, Grundlegung der Psychophysik. 

2 See Sommer's report on the so-called Grashey case — a patient named 
Voit — in Zeitsch. fur Psychologie, II., Heft 3, p. 158, and the citations of 
Pick, same journal, III., Heft 1, p. 50. 



412 The Mechanism of Revival 

else; only the former can be accounted for as due to the 
incipient stimulation of his own speech centres, the other is 
probably auditory. 1 This interpretation is supported by the 
interesting fact, established by Pierre Janet, that some 
patients can themselves speak during their verbal hallucina- 
tions, while others cannot. Again, only of the latter class 
must we hold that the motor memories are necessary to 
speech. 2 Indeed, there is a characteristic difference between 
the two classes, — a difference first pointed out, it seems, by 
Baillarger — i.e. with those patients who are able to speak 
without interrupting the voice which they hear, we have a 
hallucination of objective speech : they hear what they think 
is a real voice outside them. While the other class have a 
hallucination of internal speech. They declare that there is 
some one inside them, speaking to them. Seglas holds, with 
evident truth, that these latter hallucinations are ' psycho- 
motor' 3 in their seat, while the 'objective' kind are auditory. 
(2) There are cases of aphasia due to impairment of hearing, 
the motor centres being intact, i.e. cases of auditory verbal 
amnesic aphasia. 4 (3) We recognize and understand words 
which we are unable to pronounce, and which we have never 
written ; this recognition must be by aid of visual or auditory 
images. The part played by the visual and motor memories 
respectively, in my own case, is seen in the fact that when I 

1 See case of Charcot quoted by Ballet, Le langage interieur, p. 64, also 
cases in Seglas, Les troubles du langage chez les alienes, p. 126. 

2 Cf. Revue Philosophique, November, 1892, p. 520, and Seglas, loc. cit., 
p. 117 and p. 145. A case is reported of a patient who could stop his internal 
voice by holding his breath (Annates Psychol., January, 1893, p. 103). 

3 Seglas, loc. cit., p. 147; Janet, loc. cit., who advocates the expression 
* kinaesthetic verbal' instead of 'psycho-motor,' as applying to this hallu- 
cination of internal speech. 

4 See cases collected by Ballet, loc. cit., pp. 91-92; also Bastian's case, 
Brain as Organ of Mind, p. 642 ; cf . also Paulhan, Revue Philosophique, 
XXL, pp. 37 ff. 



Internal Speech 413 

wish to speak in any language but English, the German words 
come first into my mind ; but when I sit down to write in a 
foreign language, French words invariably present them- 
selves. This means that my German is speech-motor and 
auditory, having been learned conversationally in Germany, 
while the French, which was acquired in school by reading 
and exercise -writing, is visual and hand-motor. 1 It is in- 
teresting also to note the joyous recognition which young 
children show, when they speak a new vowel or consonant 
sound correctly. The memory of the correct sound cannot, 
in this case evidently, be from the motor centres. 2 (4) There 
is evidence of direct functional connection between the visual 
and auditory seats respectively, and the centre of motor dis- 
charge. Here I may best give the words of Janet, who 
writes in view of the pathological evidence: "This hypoth- 
esis is confirmed by investigations on anaesthetic hysterics. 
In my opinion, it is impossible to explain the fact that these 
persons preserve their power of movement intact, in spite of 
the absolute loss of kinassthetic sensations and images, un- 
less we admit that movement may be directly stimulated by 
visual and auditory pictures. There are individuals with 
whom the auditory image of a word suffices for its pronun- 
ciation." 3 (5) The law of 'dynamogenesis,' in accordance 

1 A similar case, apart from details, is reported by Ballet, loc. cit., p. 62. 

2 At the risk of too much personality (of which, however, the literature of 
this topic is necessarily full), I may quote the following about my two-year- 
old child H., written by her aunt, Miss E. L. Baldwin: "She rejoices greatly 
when she succeeds in sounding a new letter. The other day she achieved /, 
and went about telling everybody, 'Baby can say sleep and slipper.' This 
morning I am informed that she can say 'save' and 'give' (letter v). She 
notices at once herself, when she can pronounce the word as the rest of us 
do — no one tells her." 

3 Pierre Janet, Automatisme Psychologique, p. 60. The common cases of 
patients who can copy, when they cannot initiate writing and speech, are in 
evidence. 



414 The Mechanism of Revival 

with which every sensory stimulation tends to bring about a 
motor discharge, indicates such a direct connection in cases 
of closely associated function. Fere demonstrates that 
speaking makes the hand -grasp stronger, that seeing colours 
and hearing sounds influence the motor centres; so it is 
altogether probable that stimulations of sight and hearing 
react directly to stimulate the motor speech centres. 1 (6) Cases 
may be cited of direct antagonism between memories of words 
and the sensations produced by the speech movements which 
they stimulate. The pathological state called paraphasia 2 
is duplicated sometimes temporarily in cases of severe head- 
ache; one intends to mention one object (chair) and really 
speaks another (spoon), without detecting the mistake. I 
have myself had this experience ; being quite unable to name 
correctly an object seen, until some one else has spoken the 
word with emphasis — yet all the while allowing my own 
incorrect word to pass, and feeling astonishment that others 
have not understood my meaning. Similar are those cases 
in which patients take their own words for those of some one 
else, declaring, when questioned, that they themselves did 
not speak them. 3 Reflection leads us to the view that in 
these cases there is a direct flow from the auditory or visual 
centre to the motor speech centre, the kinesthetic speech 
centre being, perhaps, temporarily inhibited. The same 
kind of antagonism is also seen, from the other side, when 
there is 'exaltation' of the kinesthetic centre, or what is 

1 Fere cites his results in support of Strieker's contention ; see his Sensa- 
tion et Mouvement. He fails, however, to distinguish between the direct 
motor effect of a sensation, and the indirect motor effect — i.e. through 
the kinesthetic centre, or via the motor correlations which the attention re- 
quires — this indirect effect being required by Strieker's view. 

2 Cf. Bastian's cases of ' incoordinate amnesia,' Brain as Organ of Mind 
pp. 634-638. 

3 See Seglas' very interesting cases, loc. cit., pp. 150 f. 



Internal Speech 415 

called uncontrollable 'verbal impulse.' The patient speaks 
certain words or phrases in spite of himself — against his 
utmost effort to speak something else. 1 

This conception of the case — not to dwell upon other 
points of evidence 2 — seems to harmonize well with the 
doctrine of nervous function now becoming more and more 
current. According to this doctrine, the brain is a series of 
centres of only relatively stable tension; the various 
associative connections among these centres are paths of 
less and more, rather than of least and niost, resistance ; the 
range of alternative adjustments is excessively wide; and, 
consequently, any individual has his 'personal equation' 
in all functions as complex as that of speech. One man is 
a 'motor,' another a 'visual,' a third an 'auditive,' according 
as one or another of the extrinsic sources of stimulation 
suffices to release the necessary energy into his motor speech 
centre. No one doubts Strieker, therefore, when he says 

1 See Seglas on 'hysterical mutism,' loc. cit., pp. 97 f. In dreams this is 
probably the case : the kinesthetic centres are no longer inhibited, and we 
talk meaningless sounds, which in our dream consciousness are interpreted, as 
rational discourse. In view of all such cases of antagonism, I suggested in an 
earlier statement of the main considerations on this point (Philos. Review, II., 
1893, p. 389), that a distinction was legitimate between psychic and cortical 
dumbness, corresponding to the current distinction on the sensory side. Just 
as there is a distinction between being unable to hear words (cortical deaf- 
ness), and being unable to understand the meanings of words we hear (psychic 
deafness), so there is a distinction, shown pathologically, between being 
unable to speak words, and being unable to speak the words we mean. Put 
in different terminology, the former case would be due to a lesion of the motor 
elements at the 'second level,' and the latter case to a lesion of the motor 
connections between the second and the cortical or 'third level.' Compare 
the allusions made to these differences above, Chap. XIII., § 3, p. 387. 

2 For instance, cf. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, I., pp. 160 ff. Further evi- 
dence accrues, also, from the consideration of tune memories, which seem to 
be independent, in many adults, and generally in children, of the singing or 
playing of the tunes. Cf . above, Chap. VI., § 5, and the next section of this 
chapter. 



41 6 The Mechanism of Revival 

that he remembers words only by means of sensations of 
incipient movement; but for the same reason we cannot 
dispute the claim of Stumpf, and Wernicke, and Kussmaul, 
and Lichtheim, that auditory and visual images may, in 
other cases, play an equally leading role. 

§ 2. Internal Song: How do we think of Tunes? 

The question of 'internal song' is a newer one. What 
do we mean when we say that a 'tune is running in our 
head'? What sort of images are really in consciousness 
then? 

The factors involved are evidently less complex than those 
already shown to be involved in speech memory, in the dis- 
cussion in the preceding paragraph, at the same time that 
the entire phenomenon is more obscure. Evidence goes to 
show that the internal tune is almost entirely auditory : that 
is, that the auditory centre is intrinsic to musical reproduc- 
tion. 

An adequate discussion of the nature of tune reproduction 
should provide a theory of tune perception which takes ac- 
count of three factors — pitch, time or rhythm, timbre — ■ 
and possibly of a fourth character, ordinarily designated by 
the phrase ' musical expression, ' or, more properly, emotional 
tone. 1 

1 There is not a great deal of literature on this topic : see the following 
titles: Egger, La parole interieure; Strieker, Langage et musique; Stumpf, 
Tonpsychologie, I., pp. 135 ff. ; Wallaschek, Vierteljahrschrift fur Musik- 
ivissenschaft, 189 1, Heft 1, and 'Die Bedeutung der Aphasia fur die Musik- 
vorstellung,' Zeitsch. fur Psychol., VI., Heft 1, and his review of my theory in 
the same journal, VII., Heft 1 ; Wallaschek has a popular article also in the 
Contemporary Review, September, 1894; Lotze, Medicinische Psychologie, 
p. 480; G. E. Miiller, Grundlegung der Psyckophysik, p. 288; v. Franckl- 
Hochwart, ' Ueber den Verlust der musikalischen Ausdruckvermogens ' in 
Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Nervenheilkunde, 1891, I., pp. 283-291 ; Oppenheim, 



Internal Song 417 

There are certain interesting points of relationship between 
the process of internal speech and that of 'internal' or 
remembered music. For example, many persons find in- 
ternal tunes generally fuller, more real, and sometimes only 
tunes at all when vocal movements are involved ; either, 
that is, when they remember the appropriate words, when they 
have sung the words to the tune, or when they have hummed 
the refrain aloud. Here there is clearly a motor type of music 
performers. But this motor requirement is extremely vari- 
able. In some cases the tune must be associated with a par- 
ticular instrument, and this is done only by the reproduction 
of the proper sensations in the finger tips, lips, etc., used in 
playing that instrument. On the other hand, there are facts 
which show that the motor type is only a type, and that even 
in these cases auditory tune memories are necessary. Musical 
recognition in childhood often precedes verbal recognition. 
Musical expression usually precedes verbal expression, both 
when there is a clearly inherited musical tendency, 1 and in 
ordinary imitative reactions. 2 In case of 'absolute hear- 
ing,' discussed below, we have apparently recognition of 
pitch without any motor speech or song images. Further, 
there is the critical fact that motor aphasia, and even verbal 
deafness, may exist with no impairment of the musical faculty 
— no atnusia, as defects of musical faculty are called by 
Brazier. This is true both for musical recognition (case of 
Wernicke), and for musical expression. 3 Cases show, how- 

Charite Annalen, XIII., 1888, 345-383; besides the voluminous literature 
of aphasia. An interesting late article, full of bibliographical references, is 
by Brazier, Revue Philosophique, October, 1892, p. 337. For later citations, 
see the appropriate topics in the writer's Diet, of Philos. and Psychology. 

1 Interesting cases are cited by Ballet, loc. cit., p. 24. 

2 My child E. imitated a run of three notes, vocally, before she showed any 
verbal imitations. 

3 Cf. v. Franckl-Hochwart, loc. cit., I., p. 283. 

2E 



418 The Mechanism of Revival 

ever, that the latter, musical expression, is never lost, without 
involving speech; although musical recognition seems 
sometimes, as in Carpenter's case and in Brazier's cases of 
musical amnesia, to be lost without impairing speech. 1 The 
conclusion that musical reproduction is auditory is supported 
also by such facts as the following : that we often recognize an 
air after hearing it once, even when we have never tried to 
sing it r and could not if we tried ; that in singing or humming 
a tune, we know that we are wrong even when we are unable 
to correct it; tune hallucinations without words or vocal 
quality are reported, and illusions of tunes may be started by 
accidental sounds; 2 many persons are able to remember and 
recall musical chords and combinations which it is impossible 
for the human voice to reproduce, i.e. we can mentally depict 
hannony ; further, there are cases of persons who can recog- 
nize the pitch of tones from instruments, but not that of the 
tones of their own voice. 3 It seems clear, indeed, on the sur- 
face, that of the elements distinguished above as essential 
to musical reproduction — pitch, rhythm, timbre, and emo- 
tional tone — the most essential, pitch, finds no adequate 
basis in motor speech or song memories. The range of 
intonation in speaking and singing is too narrow to supply 
the material for musical reproduction, although there are, no 
doubt, individuals whose musical capacity — especially of 
expression — is confined to these limits. 
It is probable, accordingly, that there is a brain-centre for 

1 Wallaschek, Zi. j. Psych., VII., March, 1893, p. 671, in criticising this 
statement of mine, cites cases of musical inability through stage-fright, while 
speech remains, as possible exceptions. I think, however, that stage-fright is 
such an emotional and interested thing that the inability is not really musical 
at all, but is rather due to general nervous inhibition. 

2 Ordinary internal tunes are usually stimulated in this way, as I have said 
above, Chap. VI., § 5. 

3 Cases of v. Kries cited below. 



Pitch Recognition 419 

tune memories — a centre whose impairment produces so- 
called notal amusia — that this centre is a part, in function, 
at least, if not anatomically, of the auditory centre, and that 
cases will occur of partial amusia in different persons, due 
to the degree in which this function involves others. 1 This 
general conclusion is confirmed, I think, by what follows on 
pitch memory, the only one of the four elements of musical 
reproduction which is in order here. 

§ 3. Pitch Recognition: How do we know Notes? 

The recognition of the pitch of notes gives two cases ap- 
parently distinct from each other, i.e. 'relative' and 'absolute' 
pitch recognition. In relative recognition the musical inter- 
val seems to supply the real locus of the recognition. Given 
the initial note and the proper rhythm — and the rest of the 
tune comes up by reason of the associated tone intervals, 
note by note. It is the case of objective recognition by 
assimilation of content, as already described. 2 Comparatively 
few persons lack the ability to carry through a familiar tune 
mentally. Absolute recognition, on the other hand, is a differ- 
ent accomplishment ; even among competent musicians it is 
often 3 conspicuously absent. It is the power of reproducing a 
note of any desired pitch absolutely from memory. 

1 For example, musical deafness without verbal deafness ; case of Grant 
Allen in Mind, III., p. 157, and that of Brazier, loc. cit., p. 359. Bastian, 
loc. cit., p. 664, quotes a case from Lasegue of an aphasic musician, who 
could write nothing but passages of music which he had just heard. A recent 
case of Pick's {Archiv fiir Psych., 1892, p. 910) seems at first sight to give 
trouble, i.e. a case of loss of musical recognition with no impairment of musical 
expression. Yet Pick's location of the lesion as subcortical sufficiently accords 
with the view in the text. The seat of auditory attention was not injured. 
Cf. note on Pick's position, and the theory of 'muscular control,' below, Chap- 
XV., § 4. 

2 Chap. X., § 3. 

3 In the case of some of those who carry tuning-forks in their pockets. 



420 The Mechanism of Revival 

The auditory character of all relative pitch recognition is 
shown by the following facts — in addition to the general 
considerations already adduced : (i) Brazier 1 cites cases of 
aphasic patients who could speak words only by singing them : 
that is, they must first recognize an air, and then arouse the 
motor speech function from that cue. The motor centre not 
being available in these cases, it is difficult to see on what 
but auditory grounds the tune recognition could proceed. It 
often occurs, in my own case, that I cannot recall the words 
of a song until I get the tune started. Another case of this 
kind is cited immediately below. (2) I find it possible, with 
Paulhan, 2 to think different notes very clearly while the vocal 
organs are held rigid. I am able to think one note while I 
am uttering aloud a long-drawn-out vocal sound, say a, in 
a different pitch. And lest it may be said that it is the over- 
tones which are heard internally in this case, I may add, that 
I am able with the greatest ease to hold aloud an a sound at 
c', say, and at the same time to cause a whole tune — say 
Yankee-doodle — to run its course 'in my ear.' Strieker's 
inability to think one consonant while speaking another is 
due, probably, to the fact that, in uttering labials, etc., pro- 
nounced and explosive muscular combinations are necessary, 
and that they have no clear auditory character, being usually 
merged in accompanying vowel sounds. (3) My internal 
tunes have very decided pitch — determined upon an in- 
strument in a number of cases. Yet, as I have said above, 
it is not always the normal pitch of the tune as written and 
learned, nor is it constant for recurrences of the same tune. 

In explaining pitch recognition the question of relative 
pitch comes first. The very fact that it is relative, means that 
it may be brought under the law of objective conscious recog- 

1 Loc. tit., p. 366. 2 Loc. tit. 



Pitch Recognition 421 

nition in general. If recognition be due to assimilation, 
relationship, 'fringe,' in the representation recognized, and 
vary with the degree of this associative of apperceptive ele- 
ment, then recognition of each note would occur, like the 
recognition of any other presented content, according as it 
have or have not a train or fringe of associated elements. A 
tune is then recognized, because it is such a train. The 
degree of precision in its recognition depends upon the fine- 
ness of discrimination at the original hearing of it. So also 
the fact that notes are better recognized after the musical 
notation has been learned, simply means that additional ele- 
ments are brought into the complex by the notation — ele- 
ments which support the claim of the whole. With persons 
of the motor type, further, the motor speech and song images 
are prominent in this complex, and so essential, in some cases, 
that recognition does not occur without them. It seems likely, 
therefore, that if we grant differences of pitch in tone sen- 
sations, the recognition of the associated trains which we 
call ' tunes ' is but an instance of a broader mental phenome- 
non. 

Absolute recognition, on the other hand, or 'absolute hear- 
ing,' as it is called, presents anomalies which make it difficult 
to explain it as an ordinary case of recognition by presented 
association. Either we must find elements of complexity in 
such tones or confess that here is an exception to the accepted 
theory. I have already given the general principles by which 
this case is to be explained : but it may be well to apply 
them now to a concrete instance. 1 The question which may 
be asked is this: Can any one identify a note of any 
pitch simply and only from the tone-quality of the note 
itself ? 

One of the latest contributions to this question is from 

1 See above, Chap, X., § 3. 



422 The Mechanism of Revival 

v. Kries, 1 who is himself a musician. He possesses the so- 
called absolute hearing. He also publishes details supplied 
from other similar cases. He argues that the ability to iden- 
tify a single isolated note cannot be due to musical practice, 
i.e. cannot be a refinement of interval recognition, 2 because 
(i) he has had this power from early boyhood, as also have 
others whom he cites; (2) some of the most celebrated mu- 
sicians have not been able to acquire it at all, although their 
sense of interval became wonderfully acute ; and (3) the power 
in himself and others varies with the instrument which sounds 
the note, and is not best with the instruments most used. He 
recognizes notes from the piano best, also from string and 
wind instruments, especially the violin, but not those from 
tuning-forks, or steam and other whistles, or notes sung or 
whistled with the lips — a state of things shown with some 
variations also in several of his correspondents. Now the 
violin is with v. Kries a late accomplishment, while he has, 
of course, been hearing singing all his life, accompanying 
singers on the piano from his twelfth year, and whistling 
habitually. Indeed, these last facts — showing the influ- 
ence of timbre on pitch recognition — lead him to deny that 
there are any revived images of any kind belonging intrin- 
sically to musical recognition. He finds it to be a case of the 
' association by naming ' as established by Lehmann ; that is, 
v. Kries was not able to recognize notes until after, in boy- 
hood, he had learned their names and written signs. The 
case is analogous, therefore, he holds, to the recognitions which 
Lehmann found to follow from the simple lettering and 
naming of shades of wool not before separately recognized. 
This conclusion of v. Kries is lame, I think. It does not 

1 ' Das absolute Gehor,' in Zeitschrijt fur Psychology und Physiologie der 
Sinnesorgane, III., 192, p. 257. 
2 So Stumpf, loc. cit., I., p. 280. 



Pitch Recognition 423 

account for the differences due to timbre mentioned above; 
for the notation is the same practically for all the instruments 
and for the voice, v. Kries admits this, and says it remains 
for the future to provide a theory of this influence due to 
timbre — leaning, however, as he does, to the overtone 
theory. Further, he agrees with other observers in finding 
that chords are better recognized than single notes; this 
would indicate that recognition is due in some way to the 
complexity and variety of the tone content, rather than to the 
accident of naming. It is possible, perhaps, to give due 
weight to the influence of the name association in a theory 
which does more justice to the essential facts. This and 
other cases of the recognition of apparently isolated sense 
qualities can be brought, I think, under the law of 'sensori- 
motor association' made out above, 1 according to which the 
recognition is due simply to the modification of the a element 
in the formula of attention, i.e. to the relative ease of ad- 
justment of the attention to one particular tone-pitch as such. 
Several considerations may be urged in favour of this 
view: (1) It brings absolute and relative tone recognition 
under a single principle; the former arises on the motor 
side, the latter on the sensory, or content side, of the one 
process; (2) it accounts for the greater relative ease of recog- 
nition of chords and compound tones ; apart from their com- 
plexity of content, they carry greater and more varied dyna- 
mogenic influence; (3) it makes it possible to consider tone 
recognition in some cases hereditary, as the facts {i.e. cases of 
v. Kries and others) seem to require ; persons have from birth 
a tendency to give the attention with greater facility to one 
class of stimulations than to another — so the doctrine of 

1 Chap. X., § 3. Instead of Hoff ding's sentence (Phil. Stud., VIII., p. 90), 
'die organische Functionen gehen leichter' in absolute recognition, I should 
say, the psycho-physical function of attention 'goes easier.' 



424 The Mechanism of Revival 

types teaches. Why may not this difference extend also to 
different notes? The analysis given above of the speech 
function leads us to see what refinements are possible in the 
recognition of words. Even the recognition of particular 
classes of words, as nouns, may be lost while other words are 
correctly used. Brazier cites a case in which the visual 
time notation of written music was retained while the pitch 
notation in the same music was lost. A corresponding 
native refinement on the motor side, i.e. in the attention, is 
all that this theory requires, that is, if we are right in consider- 
ing the attention to involve refined motor adjustments. Re- 
finements on the sensory side, as seen in association, are 
dependent, indeed, upon refinements on the motor side. 
The variations in motor reactions are the winnowing, selecting 
agents in all mental progress; (4) it enables us to explain 
the apparent influence of timbre, a fact not explained by any 
other theory. The fact that isolated tones from some in- 
struments are recognized, while from others they are not, I 
hold to arise from differences in the type of attention exerted 
in the several cases respectively. A 'visual' musician is 
most likely to recognize tones from instruments whose manip- 
ulation or notation involves much visual attention ; an ' audi- 
tive,' notes from those which exercise hearing in most varied 
and exclusive ways; and a 'motor,' notes from those in con- 
nection with which muscular attention is at its best. It is 
remarkable that in all of v. Kries's recognitions, the method of 
learning is probably by visual note-reading, — piano, violin, 
etc., — while his non- recognitions — his own voice, voice 
of others, steam whistles, lip-whistling, etc. — are apparently 
in cases in which the essential indications do not include such 
systematic visual attention. Now on the supposition that 
v. Kries is a 'visual,' i.e. that the pitch elements of the atten- 
tion in his case are most readily stimulated from the centre 



Pitch Recognition 425 

for sight, we have a clear application of our law. 1 Further, 
v. Kries was unable to recognize tones before he learned musi- 
cal notation, which, it is natural to suppose, was at first visual. 
The case of musical alexia already quoted from Brazier shows 
the importance of a single class of notation memories, although 
that case involved the loss, not of tone recognition, but of 
musical execution; 2 (5) one of v. Kries's cases of 'absolute 
hearing' seems to be, from what he reports of it, motor in 
type : a young woman who recognized tones when sung only 
by means of 'internal repetition,' to herself, of the notes sung 
(das Bediirfniss bestand, sie innerlich nachzusingen)? This 
innerliches Nachsingen, in a case where the real note is 
already heard, is probably motor, a supposition supported by 
the fact that the woman was a 'skilful singer herself.' Her 
quicker recognition of piano tones might be because of the 
motor practice in hand execution ; (6) this point of view affords 
us an additional reason for the fact, which all admit, that 
the best recognitions are for notes of moderate pitch, — not 
very high or very low ; for, being of most frequent occurrence, 
these notes exercise the attention most, and so get most easily 
and readily accommodated to. And it is also easy to see that, 
for this reason, their discrimination becomes finer and better ; 
(7) in the experiments already referred to, Fere* found differ- 
ent dynamogenic effects to follow the hearing of the different 
notes of the musical scale, and the greatest effect to follow the 
notes in the middle of the gamut ; if true, this is nothing short 
of a demonstration of variations in the a element in attention, 
for different pitches. 

Finally, if 'motor associates' be at the bottom of pure- 

1 Of course, such an application is only an illustration ; the details of the 
individual's life and education — the questions 'why?' and 'to what extent? 
he is visual, motor, etc. — make any single case extremely complex. 
2 Loc. cit., p. 363. s Loc. cit., p. 273. 



426 The Mechanism of Revival 

tone recognition, we would expect something of the same kind 
in the case of colour and odour qualities. This is the 
sphere of Lehmann's results in Benennungsassociation to 
which v. Kries appeals. Now Fere claims to have demon- 
strated this point also, i.e. that colour discrimination and 
recognition are improved by muscular exercise. He found it 
possible to bring back purple recognition to purple-blind 
hysterics, simply by muscular movement. It is a ready 
deduction, also, from the opposite fact that the different 
colours, beginning with red, have diminishing dynamogenic 
effect as measured on the squeeze-dynamometer. 

The details now cited, in the case of speech and tune 
revival, may be taken as detailed examples of the application 
of the general theory of assimilation to detailed instances. 
The position of the theory as regards recognition of tones 
may be stated in the words of James, quoted from his review 
of my earlier article : "It offers a basis of mediation between 
the two theories of Recognition over which Hoffding and 
Lehmann have recently waged war. One theory, stated in 
its radical form, says that a thing looks familiar to us when it 
recalls to us its past self. The other theory says it looks or 
sounds familiar when it recalls its past surroundings. The 
difficulty with the latter view is, that the supposed surround- 
ings fail to become explicitly conscious when the recognition 
is confined to the bare 'sense of familiarity.' How do we 
know, then, that they are at all tending to revive? But 
Professor Baldwin, in making them sink to the level of mere 
motor associates of former acts of attention, gives a good 
reason why our consciousness of them should be so indistinct, 
and why at the same time we should so unmistakably greet 
the sensory experience which they accompany as one already 
ours." * 

1 The Psychological Review, L, 1894, p. 210. 



Pitch Recognition 427 

An informal criticism by Professor HofMing is answered 
in another place. 1 Wallaschek 2 objects to my view, that 
as all persons have the requisite factors, all should have ab- 
solute tone recognition. But the reason they do not is, 
I think, not a fault of their reproduction, but of their per- 
ception. Some cannot recognize tones again, because they 
do not clearly distinguish them in the first instance. All 
possible variations, from the best to the poorest discrimination 
of tones, would give corresponding variations in the facility 
of recognition. 

It may be well to note, finally, that one among the minor 
questions to which this theory of sensori-motor association 
suggests answers, is that of so-called 'paramnesia,' — the false 
recognition of new localities, interiors, etc., the sense that an 
event has happened to one before. It may be due to the arti- 
ficial or accidental stirring up of an old attention series. Any 
new experience which gives approximately the same strains, 
etc., in the attention complex, as an earlier experience, would 
seem familiar, at the same time that it might not be nor seem 
objectively identical. 

1 See Chap. XV., § 4, footnote: 

2 Zt. fur Psych., VII., March, 1894, p. 68. 



CHAPTER XV 

The Origin of Attention 

§ i. Voluntary Attention 

The foregoing examination of current theories of devel- 
opment has served to throw into relief the elements of the 
problem. It has also shown that a theory of adaptation 
must have reference to the repetition of stimulations, 
fundamentally, not of movements; the theory developed 
above — based as it is upon the work of Darwin and Spencer 
— is consciously drawn to supply this want. 

The three psychological stages or levels at which we find 
consciousness getting new accommodations have already 
been pointed out, 1 and the claim made that the 'law of excess/ 
enunciated above, applies to each and all of them. We have 
already considered the two lower stages and now come to the 
third. The question is now, accordingly, How is the con- 
scious person able to perform a new movement voluntarily 
and with attention? 

The first remark is this : To make any movement volun- 
tarily, the attention must be fixed upon some kind of an idea 
which represents this movement. I do not care to repeat the 
analysis which I have published elsewhere, 2 and which James 
has also made, much more forcibly, 3 of volition back to its last 
citadel — voluntary attention to an idea. Everybody, it 
seems, now admits it. If the object of volition, then, is a 

1 Above, Chap. VII., § i, ad fin. 2 Handbook, II., Chaps. XII., XV. 

3 Princ. oj Psychology, Vol. I., Chap. XI. 

428 



Voluntary Attention 429 

movement, an idea that means the movement must be at- 
tended to. 

But in the case of learning a thing for the first time the 
movement required is not an old, but a new one : 1 hence 
it cannot be a mental image or memory of the movement, 
to which the attention is directed; it must be an external 
movement or event, of some kind, which yet in some way 
manages to send its dynamogenic influence into the motor 
channels required. 

Now to acquire a movement seen, or in some other way 
externally set up, — this is exactly conscious imitation. 
The problem then reduces itself to the process of persistent 
effortful imitation ; and we have to ask how attention to a 
movement seen, for example, enables the child or man to come 
to perform this movement himself. 

The process of persistent imitation, as far as its mechan- 
ism is concerned, has been depicted and figured above. 2 
The point essential to our present topic has also been casually 
mentioned, i.e. that the difference between 'simple' and 'per- 
sistent' imitation of the try-try-again type, is that, in the 
former, an earlier muscular movement is repeated without 
variation, while in the latter, the earlier movement is modified 
in such a way as to approximate, more and more closely, the 
movement-copy attended to. 

In persistent imitation the first reaction is not repeated. 

1 Unless, indeed, it has been accidentally performed before. It may be 
admitted that many useful acts are acquired by such happy accident, and 
one may say that the ' excess ' discharge is of use largely in increasing 
such happy hits. But no one will deny that the ' hits ' occur mainly through 
the child's imitations in cases of complex action, such as speech, writing, 
sewing, etc. It has been shown, however, that the former movement must 
have been innervated from the centre (that is, produced by the person him- 
self), not merely mechanically produced. Cf. Bair in Psych. Review, VIII., 
1901, p. 474. 

2 Chap. XIII., § 2. 



430 The Origin of Attention 

Hence we must suppose the development of a function of 
co-ordination by which the two regions excited respectively 
by the original suggestion and the reaction first made, co- 
alesce in a common more voluminous and intense stimulation 
of the motor centre. A movement is thus produced which, 
by reason of its greater mass and diffusion, includes more 
of the elements of the movement seen and copied. This 
is again reported by eye or ear, giving a new excitement, 
which is again co-ordinated with the original stimulation 
and with the after-effects of the earlier imitations. The 
result is yet another motor stimulation, or effort, of still 
greater mass and diffusion, which includes yet more ele- 
ments of the 'copy.' And so on, until simply by its in- 
creased mass, including the motor excitement of attention 
itself, — by the greater range and variety of the motor ele- 
ments thus innervated, — in short, by the excess discharge, 
the 'copy' is completely reproduced. The effort thus suc- 
ceeds. (See Fig. XIV., above.) 

This, it is evident, is the principle of 'motor excess,' and 
it is natural to find in it the origin of the attention. The 
attention is the mental function corresponding to the habitual 
motor co-ordination of the processes of heightened or 'excess' 
discharge. The exact elements which it includes have al- 
ready been pointed out, and they will be spoken of again. 

Let the child once withdraw attention from his copy, let 
him be distracted by bird or beast, and woe to his chance of 
learning the new movement. The whole conglomerate con- 
scious content falls to pieces and he goes back to be a creature 
of suggestion. But let him keep on attending — strongly, 
faithfully, well — and note his actions. His whole physical 
personality gets concentrated in conjoint, then allied, then 
unified, then convulsive discharge upon the member which, 
by habit or previous use, is nearest to the copy requirement. 



Voluntary Attention 431 

He rolls his tongue, bites his lip, sways his body, works his 
legs, winks his eyes, etc., until every scheming nerve and 
tendon bends to do the task. His blood-vessels, even, fill 
toward the hand he works with. This occurs only in attention, 
and this is the excess wave by which here in the highest con- 
sciousness, as there in the lowest organism, accommodation to 
new stimulations is secured} 

A direct examination of the infant's earliest voluntary 
movements shows the growth in mass, diffusion, and lack of 
precision which this theory requires. In acquiring the as- 
sociations of elements involved in successful handwrit- 
ing, 2 the young child uses hand, then hand and arm, then 
hand, arm, tongue, face, and finally his whole body. In 
speaking, also, he ' mouths' his sounds, screws his tongue and 
hands, etc. And he only gets his movements reduced to 
order after they have become by effort massive and diffuse. 
I find no support whatever in the children themselves, for 
the current view of psychologists, i.e. that voluntary com- 
binations are gradually built up by adding up earlier volun- 
tary movements, muscle to muscle, and group to group. This 
is true only after each of these elements has itself become 
voluntary. Such a view implies that the infant, at this stage, 
has a kind of separate consciousness of the different muscles, 
including those which he has never learned to use, which is 
false; and is able to avail himself of muscles which he has 
not learned to use, which is equally false — not to allude to 
the fact that it leaves suspended in mid-air the problem as to 
how the new combination, intended and dwelt upon by atten- 
tion, or no longer held in the attention? gets itself actually 
carried out, in the muscles. 

1 A similar view may now be found in Professor Lloyd Morgan's Habit 
and Instinct, p. 162. 2 See the details given above, Chap. V., § 2. 

3 This is in brief the answer to the criticism made by some {e.g. Royce) 
that the theory gives no positive inhibition of the elements that are not selected. 



432 The Origin of Attention 

When muscular effort thus succeeds, by the simple fact 
of increased mass and diffusion of reaction, the useless 
elements fall away because they have no emphasis. 1 The 
correct elements are, on the contrary, reinforced by their agree- 
ment with the 'copy', by the dwelling of attention upon them, 
by the pleasure which accompanies success. In short, the 
law of survival of the fittest by natural, or, in this case, func- 
tional, selection, assures the persistence of the reaction thus 
gained by effort. 

We may merely note in passing, also, that this theory of 
the process of voluntary attention is not open to the objections 
commonly urged against earlier views. How can we conceive 
the relation of mind and body ? The alternatives commonly 
recognized are three: either the mind interferes with brain 
processes, or it directs brain processes, or it does nothing; 
these are the three. Now, on the view here presented, none 
of these is true. The function of the mind is simply to have 
a persistent presentation — a suggestion, a 'copy.' The law 
of motor reaction, plus the accumulated excess, does the rest. 
The muscles express the influence of the central excitement; 
this sets inwards as more excitement, which we call attention 
and emotion, and this the muscles again express ; and so on, 
until by the law of lavish outlay, which nature so of ten employs, 
the requisite muscular combination is secured and persists. 
In the words of Ziehen, "the appearance of the concomitant 
psychical processes themselves is the only fact that needs ex- 
planation. . . . The fitness of actions is quite conceivable 
as the result of natural laws." * 

1 Physiol. Psychology, p. 274. Ziehen recognizes the essential sameness 
of the selecting process for reflex (phylogenetic) and voluntary (ontogenetic) 
selections. He says : " In both cases the process of selection is the essential 
factor in the development of this fitness. In the case of reflex action . . . 
this selection is essentially a phylogenetic process : in the case of [voluntary] 
actions, it is an ontogenetic process." 



Voluntary Attention 433 

Besides the general fact that this view makes the stimu- 
lus or copy the essential thing for reproduction, it takes 
another step as necessary for psychology, I think, as the 
former is for general biology : the identification of voluntary 
attention with motor reaction, at once habitual, in the main, 
but yet 'excessive,' in part, in the centres of highest co-ordi- 
nation. Attention is essentially an accumulation, 1 due to 
continued selection in racial evolution. 

This is considered a grave question by many who forget 
that whatever the voluntary life is, every child has to pass 
into it from the involuntary life, without a miracle; and it 
may be well to present some general considerations in addition 
to the facts of infant life now mentioned. 

i. It should be remembered, I may repeat, that the 
problem of accommodation is really the problem of selection. 
How does an organism select the stimulations which are 
profitable to it? It is in answer to this question that the 
'excess' function is postulated, and has been in the 'in- 
creased nervous discharge' of biological theories of the 
Spencer-Bain type. Now in attention we have, undoubtedly, 
the one selective function of consciousness. Who claims any- 
thing else? Whatever attention may do besides, all the 
selections which consciousness makes are due to it. We have, 
therefore, the requirement that these two things should be 
connected in theory, i.e. the adaptations of lower organisms, 
and the selections of consciousness. Now it only gives further 
strength both to the theory of the biological selections of the 
lower organisms, and to that of the conscious selections of the 
higher, if we find that one psycho-physical principle — such as 

1 This gives a mass of 'funded' process or internal congenital function 
which all new learning starts with. This is put in evidence by Jennings 
{Behaviour of Lower Organisms, 1906). The position taken here fully 
allows for this as against the 'simple reflex' process of a more mechanical 
theory. 



434 The Origin of Attention 

'selection from overproduced movement' — runs through 
the entire development. 

2. Again, the conscious value of a stimulus to the organism 
is, on the whole, its pleasure-pain effect. This we have iden- 
tified with some form of psycho-physical process, in the ner- 
vous centres, which tends to discharge in the excess wave. In 
this again, as has been said, we are following the best theories 
of the past (Darwin, Bain, Meynert). If now our proposition 
concerning attention be true, it would follow that in the higher 
representative processes, attention is the great locus of hedonic 
consciousness. It is only necessary to reflect upon the con- 
ditions of 'ideal tone' — the pleasures of the intellectual and 
emotional life — in the exposition, for example, of Ward 
and the Herbartians, to be convinced that this is true. De- 
velopmental considerations enter here to complicate the case ; 1 
but it is sufficient to note in this place, that pleasure is, in 
lower organisms, a sign of vital profit, and, by its discharge 
in the excess wave, an agent of adaptation; and the same 
is true of intellectual and sentimental pleasure and profit. 
They indicate conscious adaptation by the phenomenon of 
attention, which is the genetic channel of an excess wave the 
same in kind. All the evidence which goes to show that no 
movement can be made unless the attention gets fixed upon 
some idea that represents this movement, and that no move- 
ment can be prevented upon the representation of which 
(itself or by proxy) the attention is fixed — all this evidence 
shows also, that attention is some kind of generalized motor 
phenomenon. Generalized, because it bears equally on all 
presented contents. All initiation of voluntary movement is a 
matter of attention, and all voluntary inhibition or control of 
movement a matter of withdrawal of attention. Now this 
is just what the excess wave ought to do — come to the aid of 

1 See below, § 3 in this chapter, on the ' Development of Attention.' 



Reflex and ' Primary ' Attention 435 

that which claims it by the right of accumulated selections, 
that which, by this aid, is again selected, and by its with- 
drawal prevent that which should, by the same tests, be 
neglected and eliminated. 

§ 2. Reflex and ' Primary »' Attention 

I have elsewhere argued for the view that reflex attention is 
an affair of motor association. The facts so evidently show 
that there is no mental initiative in the case of a violent 
drawing of attention — as by a clap of thunder, or a flash of 
light — that the problem is, not to prove that the entire 
psychological phenomenon is a change in the content of con- 
sciousness, but merely to determine what kind of a change it 
is. I have proposed to call consciousness when occupied with 
such reflex attention 'reactive,' since the essential thing about 
reflex attention is the attitude or reactive condition in which 
one finds himself as soon as his surprise — after such a clap 
of thunder — allows him to ask himself the question. Cer- 
tain muscular tensions, varying somewhat with the kind of 
sensation or image to which his attention is drawn — this 
seems to be all he finds. It seems quite in the line of fact, 
therefore, to say that reflex attention is a consciousness of a 
group of muscular and organic processes fixed in certain forms 
by habit. 

The earliest form of attention, however, is that brought out 
in low organisms by sense stimulations. It may be called 
'primary attention or conation,' in the phrase of late writers 
(Hoffding, Ward), considered as the active side of con- 
sciousness. It is by indulgence only that the term 'attention' 
is used for it, since when we use that word we have in mind 
so distinctly the exact tensions and contractions habitual in 
our developed lives of attention. But if the general view 



436 The Origin of Attention 

now advocated be true, we should expect to find, in all con- 
sciousness, the presence of such a motor element ; and while 
in any particular case the ' motor associates ' may not be special 
enough to give well-marked tone to the content, yet it should, 
in its real nature, be called a phenomenon of attention. The 
place of this early attention may be made plainer in the next 
paragraph. 

§ 3. The Development 0] Attention: Sensori-motor 
Association 

Assuming the answer now given to the question of the 
mechanism of speech, considered as a typical voluntary func- 
tion, some additional considerations arise which bring us back 
to our problem of the development of attention. 1 

In the first place, I find in my own case and from experi- 
ments with others, that the presence or absence of elements 
of movement in the consciousness of a word depends in many 
individuals largely upon the direction of the attention? If the 
attention be directed to the vocal organs, — either one's own, 
or some one else's, — movements of the tongue, lips, and 
larynx are clearly felt in the organs, sometimes also by 
touch, and may be seen. If, on the other hand, the attention 
be directed to the ear, and the words be thought of as sounds, 
these muscular sensations fall perceptibly away or disappear. 
This indicates that there are two great speech types, a motor 
type and a sensory type, according as the attention is given in 
one direction or the other — a distinction of types now familiar 
in connection with reaction-time experiments. 

The reaction time is, in a great percentage of cases, shorter 

1 See the article already mentioned in the Philosophical Review, II., 1893, 
pp. 385 ff., for the statement of some of these points, with observations. 

2 Paulhan notices this influence of the attention (Joe. cit., p. 43), but does 
not inquire into it. 



The Development of Attention ^7 

when the attention gives a so-called 'motor' reaction, i.e. 
is directed to the reacting member, rather than to the signal. 
I have experimented to some extent with a view to finding in 
what per cent, of individuals one kind of hand reaction is 
normal as against the other kind. The results show that, 
among uninstructed groups of students, reacting for the first 
time in the laboratory, about one-quarter of the entire num- 
ber, when questioned immediately after giving a series of 
sound -hand reactions, were clearly conscious of having paid 
attention to the movement of the hand. The average time 
of their reactions is considerably lower than the general 
average. This result shows clearly, not only that the differ- 
ence in time of the two kinds of reactions is a real difference 
in many persons, but also that there are individuals who nor- 
mally react most readily, and most effectively, in one way or 
the other. One of the bearings on speech is this : it becomes 
at once evident that the most rapid speakers are generally, 
ceteris paribus, 'motors' in their type. The direction of the 
attention serves to arouse the organs of speech in advance, 
by an influence the nature of which is still to be explained. 1 

Now certain questions arise here which are directly per- 
tinent to our present topic: Is a person motor, visual, or 
auditory, in his speech, and in his reactions generally, because 
he has strengthened a particular kind of memories by the pre- 
vailing concentration of his attention upon them? Or does 
he give motor or sensory attention and reaction, because of the 
predominant strength of a certain class of his memories? 
Probably both oj these positions are true; and each of them is 
of great importance in the education of speech, and other 
motor functions, as well as for the theory which is here 

1 To quote my own case again — I find it impossible to think of a French 
sentence without keeping my attention on the visual picture of the printed 
signs ; but I can follow a German sentence by memories of speech movements 
with no trace of visual attention. 



43^ The Origin of Attention 

developed. The case seems to be the exhibition, on a large 
scale, of what we find to be true of the relation of attention to 
sensations generally. Increased intensity of sensation tends 
to draw the attention ; and the attention increases the intensity 
of sensations. It is one of those processes of ' reasoning in a 
circle' which characterize the growth of body and mind 
together. Another instance is this, for which we have al- 
ready seen some probable reasons: pleasure arises from 
healthy function, while healthy function is directly assisted 
by pleasure. 

The relation which we have now discovered, however, 
between a person's 'type,' and the movements and habits of 
his attention, is capable of a clear psycho-physical explana- 
tion. 

We know that increasing intensity of sensation liberates 
energy increasingly toward the motor centres. A strong sen- 
sation tends to excite more movement than a weak one. It 
is probable, therefore, that a given degree of intensity of each 
particular sense-quality involves a motor ingredient, as an 
element in its conscious value — be it in part due to a setting- 
back process from the motor centres themselves, or in whole 
to the stirring up of revival processes in the kinesthetic cen- 
tres. The distinction between sensory and motor conscious- 
ness is largely logical ; all consciousness is both. Every sen- 
sation reverberates outwards in the muscles, and this muscular 
resonance reacts back upon the sensory factor. But it is 
clear that the largest amount of the motor 'ingredient' 
attaches to the most intense sensation. 

Now we also know that the exercise of attention involves 
a large amount of motor process ; its constant and necessary 
accompaniments are motor. Consequently the rising tide 
of motor incitation due to the rising intensity of sensation is 
an increasing stimulus to the attention, by a radiation of pro- 



The Development of Attention 439 

cesses in the centres of movement. So we have a valid reason 
for the general fact that an increase of intensity of sensation 
tends to draw and hold the attention. 

On the other hand, the ordinary opinion is true, that the 
idea of a movement is already the beginning of that move- 
ment. In the light of this principle it is easy to see that, when 
I turn my attention to a sensation, I in so far start into more 
vigorous existence the motor ingredients and associations of 
that sensation. This in turn tends to bring out more intensely 
the sensory ingredients, and so the second aspect of our 
' reasoning in a circle' is made clear ; i.e. that attention height- 
ens the intensity of sensations. 1 

This process of radiation, or mutual overflow, among the 
different motor centres — if they be different — is not hypo- 
thetical. All theories demand it. It is simply a question, 
in any special case, as to how far the circle of influence of one 
motor process may extend to neighbouring fibres and cells. 
And if the theory be true that attention is just the most habit- 
ual of all forms of motor reaction — because extending far 
back in the race history of organic accommodation — then 
the direct arousing of the attention by changes in mental 
content is fully explained in the way supposed. 

To put the matter in a nutshell — just in so far as the motor 
ingredient of a mental content of any kind is large, that is, in 

1 On the original publication of the article containing this position, 
Professor Hoffding, in a private letter, called my attention to the following 
quotation from his Outlines of Psychology (p. 316), which clearly takes the 
same general ground as to the cause of heightened intensities when attention 
is aroused : " It is possible that impulses return from the centres with which 
the voluntary concentration of consciousness is linked, to the centres of 
sensuous perception (as in other cases to motor centres), in which way their 
effect may be strengthened. This would be the physiological form of the 
psychological fact that an idea becomes clearer if we give ourselves up to pic- 
turing it " (italics mine). See also his reference to Wundt (Physiol. 
Psychologies I., pp. 233 f.). 



44-0 The Origin of Attention 

so far as the sensory ingredient is intense, just to this degree 
will the direction of the attention be secured, and to this 
degree also will both the ingredients be intensified by this act 
of attention. The two facts, therefore, that intensity draws 
attention, and attention increases intensity, may be stated 
in terms of a single principle which I venture to call, in view 
of the doctrine of association already explained, the 'law of 
sensori-motor association,' i.e. every mental state is a fusion 
of sensory and motor elements, and any influence which 
strengthens the one, tends to strengthen the other also. 

The reflex attention which follows upon increased intensity 
of sensory excitation may be considered, therefore, in conform- 
ity with what has already been said, the return wave of re- 
vived motor associates; and the increased intensity which 
follows the direction of the attention is due to the presence of 
this return wave, by the reverse association. 1 

This principle also goes far to explain the relation to each 
other of the two so-called laws which are usually stated in- 
dependently in connection with reaction times: (i) greater 
intensity of stimulus diminishes the reaction time, and (2) 
motor reactions are generally shorter than sensory. Both are 
ready deductions from the ' law of sensori-motor association.' 
As for the first law, that more intense stimulation gives a 
shorter reaction than less intense, the reason of it is now 
evident. It is because the more intense stimulus arouses 

1 Wallaschek (Zeit. fur Psychologie, VII., Heft i, March, 1894, p. 67) 
criticises this view on the ground that only in persons of the motor type 
— of speech, for example — would there be the necessary 'motor associates.' 
But this is the reverse mistake to that made by Fere, noticed above in an- 
other connection, who says that the law of dynamogenesis makes it necessary 
that all should be 'motors' in type. Both fail to distinguish between the 
general dynamogenic influence of a stimulus, which, by the law of 'sensori- 
motor association,' implicates the attention, and, on the other hand, the kines- 
thetic motor images of memory, which represent the particular movements, 
easy attention to which marks the 'motor type.' See also Appendix C, II. 



The Development of Attention 441 

more and stronger motor associates ; or, put physiologically, 
because it has greater dynamogenic effect, and so facili- 
tates motor discharge, both directly into the reacting 
muscles, and indirectly by its readier influence in getting the 
attention. 

Now as for the second fact, which holds for the majority 
of people, its explanation also follows. Experiments show 
that the reaction time is shorter when the signal is foreknown 
and the attention is consequently not drawn to it, but is left 
free to seek some further facilitating cue. This cue is found, 
of course, in persons accustomed to depend upon their motor 
memories for various voluntary actions, in the thoughts of 
the movements actually to be made in reacting. And so the 
'motor reaction' is directly prepared for. In these cases, a 
particular kind of motor association is emphasized by the 
direct act of attention. The motor associates are pictured, 
dwelt upon, emphasized beforehand, the motor centres 
are put into a state of high potential, the stimulus is left to 
discriminate itself without attention — and thus the reaction 
time is shortened. It is evident that in the sensory reaction, 
part, at least, of the dynamogenic influence of the stimulus 
goes with the attention, for the discrimination of the signal, 
etc. ; while, in the motor reaction, it all goes into the reac- 
tion, which is already prepared for by motor attention. 1 

It is an evident corollary, also, that only in persons of the 
motor type would the motor reaction be shorter than the sen- 
sory ; for it supposes a ready habit of using motor memories 
mainly in voluntary movement. Persons trained, however, 
to use auditory and visual memories as the instrument of 

1 It is only what we would expect that, when the stimulus (signal) is not 
intense enough to cany its own discrimination, either the reaction takes place 
upon a false stimulus, or the attention shifts from the movement to the 
stimulus, and the time is lengthened. 



44 2 The Origin of Attention 

attention, find their reaction time lengthened 1 when they 
come to pay close attention to the movements which they are 
about to make. 

Applying this thought to the rise of speech and its method, 
we find abundant reason for the variety of types found among 
adults. Visual, auditory, and motor memories of words date 
back to early childhood, and do not arise synchronously. 
Visual pictures of figure arise and get comparatively fixed in 
childhood some months before the child begins to speak or 
write, as is shown by its recognition of simple figures, animals, 
and later, letters. Auditory images, also, date very far back ; 
this is seen in the very early recognition of words heard. 
Special graphic memories, on the contrary, are the latest of all. 
The ability to trace outlines which have been already recog- 
nized, 2 arises only after considerable progress has been made 
in speaking, and the progress in speaking is, in turn, relatively 
much later in its rise than visual and auditory recognition. 
So the probable order in which these different elements of 
the speech faculty would come under the jurisdiction of the 
* law of sensori-motor association ' is about this : auditory, 
visual, speech-motor, hand-motor (writing) memories. And 
a similar genetic analysis might be made out for other com- 
plex activities, if the facts were carefully observed. 

1 Cases in which the sensory time was shorter than the motor have, in fact, 
been reported by Cattell (Phil. Stud., VIII., 1892, p. 403), Floumoy (Arch, 
des Sci. Phy. et Nat., vol. 27, p. 575, and vol. 28, p. 319, quoted in Rev. 
Philos., April, 1893, p. 444), and Baldwin (Medical Record, April 15, 1893, 
p. 455). See also Titchener, Mind, October, 1895, and April, 1896; Angell 
and Moore, Psych. Rev., May, 1896; Flournoy, Quelques Types de Reaction 
Simple, 1896. The explanation given in the text was proposed by me in the 
paper cited. See my extended report of results with discussion of those of 
Cattell and Flournoy, and a new case, in The Psychological Review, II., 1895 
('Studies from the Princeton Laboratory,' p. 259), and a defence of the 
'type theory of simple reaction' in Mind, January, 1896. 

2 What is called 'tracery imitation' above, Chap. V., § 1. 



The Development of Attention 443 

This means that auditory and visual memories get a good 
1 start ' on the other varieties in the genetic process. They 
acquire considerable influence over the attention, which is 
largely reflex at that early period, and they become in turn 
relatively easy of revival, before the specific motor memories 
are well begun. Here is sufficient reason — quite apart from 
congenital tendencies which may be the controlling factor — 
for the existence of auditory and visual speech types. Habits 
thus arise which, on the mental side, express the readiest 
sensori-motor associations. They amount to what some 
have called ' pre-perceptions,' or better, perhaps, ' p re-ap- 
perceptions.' On the physical side these habits represent 
preferential dynamic tensions among those paths of discharge 
whose functions merge, in common, in that of the attention. 
The law signalized above tends, of course, as life advances, 
to consolidate these particular sensori-motor couples; and 
so one particular kind of attention tends to become a per- 
manent trait of the mental life, unless the other connections 
which are subsequently brought into use, be of sufficient 
strength to supersede that originally most used. This latter, 
however, may happen in any of several instances : either from 
inherited tendency, or from the strength of other motor 
habits ; or, in course of time, by dint of continued practice 
in one selected kind of attention. 

It would seem, accordingly, that the ' auditory speech ' 
type should be found most frequently among unliterary 
people, and among those who have not had extended lin- 
guistic training, or large practice in writing and reading. 
The particular influences which are lacking in this type are 
present in the training which the attention gets in people of 
the ' motor type.' 

We have now reached, by the psychological and genetic 
analysis of speech, a result which, it is evident, confirms our 



444 The Origin of Attention 

general theory of attention. The law of ' sensori-motor asso- 
ciation' is a generalization on the side of consciousness, from 
particular cases of dynamogenesis, each of which shows, on 
the nervous side, the working of the law of 'functional selec- 
tion/ It is just by and for this, as we have seen, that atten- 
tion has developed. It is a reaction of motor character upon 
sense qualities and mental contents generally, varying in its 
degree of ease and effectiveness, according to the amount of 
habit and structural growth. On the other hand, the law 
of 'functional selection' of movements is a generalization of 
the nervous process by which each of such habits gets started, 
as representing a new accommodation of the organism. 

Closer observation of states of attention also leads us to 
note some more facts and their explanations. We find on 
examining consciousness, that attention is not a fixed thing, 
a faculty, any more than are memory or imagination. Yet 
in much of the literature of late years, in which the 'facul- 
ties' have been scouted, I know of no author who has applied 
his own criticisms consistently to the attention. Attention is 
still treated as a constant quantity, a fixed thing, the same 
for all the exercises of it, and for all the contents to which 
it gives its reaction. Memory, on the contrary, is now known 
to be a function of the content remembered; and not a 
faculty which takes up the content and remembers it. So 
we have no longer one memory, but many : visual, auditory, 
motor memories. Yet the very same thing is true of atten- 
tion; we have not one attention, but many. Attention is a 
function of the content, not a faculty that takes up the con- 
tents ; and it is only as different contents attended to, overlap 
and repeat one another, that they have somewhat the same 
function of attention. 

It is easy to see, however, why it is that attention has 
been left largely untouched in the recent reduction of mental 



The Development of Attention 445 

functions to changes in content. It is for just the same reason 
that the notion of self has been left over by criticism likewise, 
as was intimated above. 1 The reason is a genetic one. It is 
evident that here, as in many other cases, we have to note 
the tendency of many sensory stimulations to discharge them- 
selves through common motor channels. The contrast be- 
tween pleasure and pain tends, of course, to make a great 
line of division between the motor associates of some contents 
and those of others ; such as that between reaching and with- 
drawing movements. As the senses develop, further divisions 
arise. But it nevertheless remains true that a balance of 
motor contraction, reverberation, effort, is common to all 
contents, and so becomes part of the fixed expression of all 
definite states of consciousness. This fixed grouping of motor 
elements is, in its reaction upon the content which arouses it, 
the fixed element in attention (certain tensions of brow, jaws, 
skin of head, etc., — the A element in the formula given 
above for attention 2 ) ; and this makes attention seem to be 
a faculty of constant value. So it is that certain organic and 
muscular feelings contribute a certain sameness to the sense 
of self. 

But this is not all. The actual content of attention feel- 
ing is half different, more or less, from sense to sense. We 
have — i.e. I have — a feeling so different when I attend to 
a sound from that when I attend to a light, that it is with 
the greatest difficulty that I find any strains or stresses in 
head, body, or limb quite the same in the two. And when 
we come to the difference between attention to any such 
sense content and attention to an ideal content, — even 
though the latter be the memory of the very same sense- 

1 See above, Chap. XI., § 3. The chapters of James and Bradley {Appear- 
ance and Reality, Chap. IX.) are remarkable exceptions, however. 

2 Chap. X., § 3. 



446 The Origin of Attention 

thing, — the whole f eeling of attention is again extraordinarily- 
changed. In all these cases the content felt as attention is 
motor; but it is yet as varied as all the other habitually- 
varied motor responses which have been found useful in the 
race history of the organism. Its variable elements are the 
a+a values of the formula A+a+a. 

Very cursory observation of certain animals shows these 
facts in forms fixed by their varied habits of life. One has 
only to ride an intelligent horse regularly to be convinced 
not only that most of his mental processes may be conducted 
through his ears, — an effect exaggerated, perhaps, by the 
'blinders' which are put over horses' eyes when in harness, 
— but that his attention is then auditory. He shows his 
hopes, fears, expectations, curiosities, etc., by ear move- 
ments. In the rabbit and other animals in whom the olfactory 
lobes are largely developed for purposes of utility, a distinct 
type of memory and attention is probably developed in con- 
nection with smell, an olfactory type. The constant move- 
ments of the tip of the snout in many such animals when 
exploring for food, etc., by smell, shows the development of 
delicate smell-motor reflexes analogous to our eye-motor 
reflexes and the horse's ear-motor. Attention in these cases 
is probably reactive largely, but for that reason its connection 
with one sense is all the more simple and striking. 

Cases from pathology, also, show the actual dependence 
often of a particular motor function upon the single sense 
which trained the attention in the learning of this action. 
Bastian * quotes the case of an aphasic patient, who spelt 
aloud a word wrongly as he wrote it (candd for cat), but at the 
same time pronounced it correctly, as he heard it. This 
means that his spelling movements, letter by letter, had 
been learned in association with the making of the letters 

1 Brain as Organ of Mind, pp. 60-62. 



The Development of Attention 447 

and the sight of them, while the learning of the word pro- 
nunciation, as a whole, had been in connection with its sound. 

But further still, in the same line. I do not think that 
we ever — even in successive attentions to the very same 
thing under the most uniform conditions — have exactly the 
same attention feeling twice. Why should not attention, 
like everything else, be subject to the changing effects of 
habit and accommodation? Indeed, it is the very outcome 
and exponent of these principles, as I have just been arguing. 
And then, too, dynamogenesis, the basis of all the excess 
energies which are crystallized into habits, still works on, 
and is working on in every attentive reaction which we make. 
For all these reasons, we see that no two acts of attention can 
be just the same. 1 And the variable element is the a of the 
formula. 

One additional point may be merely noted here; it has 
had some enforcement in earlier chapters. We should expect 
this change in motor reaction, from act to act of attention, 
to have some equivalent in consciousness; some equivalent 
apart from change in the particular content itself which 
stimulates the attention — some generalized, vague, un- 
analyzable feelings. And so we have found. Recognition 
is one such feeling, and Belie] is another. I have argued 
independently over them both — apart from the genetic as- 
pect of the case — and found them to be just this, felt atti- 
tudes toward particular contents. 2 

1 I think it would not be difficult to test this theory of attention by the 
dynamogenic method of experiment suggested by Miinsterberg, The Psycho- 
logical Review, 1894, 441 ff. 

2 Cf. Chap. X., § 3. On Belief, see my Handbook, II., Chap. VII. , the 
genetic theory of belief is worked out in the later work, Thought and Things. 
The doctrine of Recognition, based on the law of 'sensori-motor association,' 
was published in the Philos. Review, July, 1893. Professor Hoffding, in a 
private communication, makes the criticism that, on my view, we would con- 



448 The Origin of Attention 



§ 4. Voluntary Acquisition and Control 

We are now in a position to see that voluntary movement 
has three distinct stages of development in each individual. 
We find the mind at first occupied with an object, presenta- 
tion, or stimulus, which starts a muscular reaction, either 
native, acquired, or at random.- Then a little later we find 
the mind occupied with a presentation or idea of the move- 
ment thus made, which, with its associates, tends to stimulate 
the corresponding motor processes, and thus to bring about 
the same movement. And at last we find the mind occu- 
pied with an object again, for the attainment of which the 
movement is a necessary but now a subconscious means. 

The original ' end ' of volition, therefore, is simply the 
image or picture which starts the imitative reaction. Sug- 
gestion turns out to be an original motor stimulus in volition, 
as truly as in the lower activities. The child attempts to 
speak, for example, with no attention to his organs of speech. 
He then learns that it is by muscular effort, by persistent 
imitation, that he must proceed. Accordingly, the muscu- 
lar movement now becomes his end. He strains to set his 
vocal organs properly. His efforts to control the organs, 
however, throw him, at first, into great confusion and failure. 
But after more muscular control is acquired, the third stage 
gradually follows, as the movements become habitual. The 

fuse two qualities which had been repeated the same number of times. This 
would mean that we have no differences of attention for the different sense 
qualities. But it is evident that that is not true, if I am right in saying that 
the actual motor content, a, is different for each quality, and that we so have 
different attentions, just as we have different memories, etc. His criticism 
shows — what I said above — that even the best psychologists still look upon 
attention as a relatively fixed 'faculty/ rather than as a shifting function of 
content. 



Voluntary Acquisition and Control 449 

end is now again a picture or object, and the muscular con- 
sciousness falls into the background, as, for example, in our 
developed adult speech, when we think only of the ideas 
which we wish to express. 

The theory of motor development now worked out throws 
light also, I think, on the vexed question of muscular con- 
trol — the regulation of movement in amount and direction, 
and its suppression, etc. It is easy to see that the material 
of volition, the ideas or copies attended to and imitated, are 
the means of holding the course of each movement in check 
by association. I can repeat a movement only because I am 
able to reinstate in memory the feeling of it, the copy ele- 
ments of it. But by association, as we have seen, other 
elements, such as visual, or auditory, or touch, memories, 
may stand for the muscular memories. The whole manage- 
ment of a movement, therefore, depends upon the getting 
hold by the attention of the series of positions desired for the 
limb moved, and this can be done only by filling up the 
attention with the proper copy elements of sight, hearing 
or other, which release the proper series of motor discharges, 
and these discharges only. 

The current theory of 'control' lends itself directly to this 
view, hinging, as it does, upon the matching, term by term, 
of the movements being accomplished with a remembered 
series, whether of sight, sound, or what not. The control 
of handwriting described above is a good instance. 1 The 
current theory, however, neglects the process by which the 
series to be matched is vividly held up for voluntary repro- 
duction. 

This lack we have attempted to supply. The view of at- 
tention given in what precedes, teaches us that the motor 
reaction of attention is a function of the content attended 

1 Above, Chap. V., § 2. 

2G 



45° The Origin of Attention 

to, on the one hand ; but, on the other hand, it is a part of 
the motor process in which the whole content finds its dyna- 
mogenic expression. The office of attention, therefore, is 
that of fixing the content steadily, on the sensory side, and 
at the same time of releasing the associated discharge move- 
ments, on the motor side. Attention has, in each case, as 
we have seen, grown up in exactly this way, both as an ex- 
pression of motor reverberation from typical and constant 
accommodations, and also as itself the very beginning, by 
the law of ' excess,' of the useful discharges which are, in 
their acquisition, associated with the content in question. 

Attention is the go-between between the copy imitated, 
and the imitation which copies it. It is, therefore, the central 
and essential fact in all voluntary muscular control. 

A further application suggests the basis of a theory of in- 
hibition. The inhibition of movement is of two kinds, posi- 
tive and negative. Positive inhibition we have already found 
in many cases in the suppression of movements through pain. 
This is the basis of the direct intentional suppression of move- 
ments, even when pain does not attach to the movements as 
such ; for with higher stages of mental development inhibi- 
tion has become a generalized selected function though derived 
from particular adaptations secured under the stimulus of 
pain; just as is the case with positive movement which no 
longer has to be actually pleasurable. Negative inhibition, 
on the contrary, is just the absence of that attention which is 
necessary for the selection and preservation of a movement. 
Diffused excessive movements, which serve no purpose, are 
killed by the denial to them of that fixing attention which is 
necessary to render movements persistent, orderly, and 
habitual. 

This theory of control by the attention seems so plain in 
its applications, that I have taken space for its summary 



Voluntary Acquisition and Control 451 

statement here. Its development is not necessary, however, 
to the clear statement of our general theory, but it may be 
taken up in another place. 1 

1 I intimated this theory of control in the article in the Philosophical Re- 
view, II., p. 406, from which I may quote: "The correlation of various 
images in the attention, through their respective 'motor ingredients,' is 
necessary for voluntary activity; and where a particular class of images is 
lost, the damage it works in the mental life is not alone the narrowing of the 
content of consciousness, but it is in many cases the withdrawing of that sup- 
port, without which the voluntary function cannot proceed at all. It is the 
co-ordination of the attention, therefore, — what I have elsewhere called 
'volitional apperception,' — that every one of the incoming sensory elements 
must have part, at least, of its regulating effect upon the efferent discharge. 
This is shown so clearly, as a matter of fact, in the elaborate article by Pick 
on the loss of voluntary movement by certain anaesthetics when the eyes or 
ears are closed ('Die sogenannte " conscience musculaire," ' Zeitsch. fur Psych., 
IV., 1892, 161 ff.), that I need not do more than recognize the support which 
my article gets from his. A collection of cases which show the extreme 
dependence of attention and voluntary movement, in persons of the visual 
type, upon vision, is made by Dr. Ireland in Journal of Merit. Sci., January, 
1893* PP- 130 f." 



PART IV 

GENERAL SYNTHESIS 
CHAPTER XVI 

Summary: Final Statement of Habit and Accom- 
modation 

§ i. Summary oj Theory of Development 1 

After the foregoing detailed statements of facts and 
theories, and the solution of certain particular genetic prob- 
lems, we may come to a general synthesis. What is the least 
that we can say about an organism's development ? Every- 
body admits that two things must be said : first, it develops 
by getting habits formed ; and second, it develops by getting 
new adaptations which involve the breaking up or modifica- 
tion of habits — these latter being called accommodations. 

The law of habit may now be stated generally in some 
such way as this: Habit is the tendency of an organism to 
continue more and more readily processes which are vitally 
beneficial. 

This principle we have found an axiom in biology and 
psychology. In psychology great instances of it are readily 
cited — instinct, emotional expression, the performance of 

1 This section is not intended as a resume of the entire book, but only of 
those points which are needed for the remaining sections of this chapter. 

In the foreign editions a section is inserted here on ' Intelligent Direction 
and Social Progress,' topics treated in English in the work Development 
and Evolution. 

452 _ 



Summary of Theory of Development 453 

movements pictured in the attention, even attention itself. 
In order to habit, it has become evident, the organism must 
have contractility — ability to make a response in movement 
to a stimulus — and then it must have some incentive to make 
and keep making the right kind of movement. The essential 
thing about habit, then, is this : the maintenance of advan- 
tageous stimulations by the organism's own movements. Now 
what is the incentive to the right kind of movement? The 
answer to this question carried us farther. 

Three answers are possible. The only incentive may be 
the actual stimulus, altogether outside the organism, and 
the right movement may be only a chance selection from 
many random movements. This is the ordinery biological 
theory. The stimulus is supposed to 'come along' very 
often, and, moreover, to be very varied in its kind, locality, 
etc. ; so that by repeating happy chance movements, habits 
are formed, and by compounding the habits, these habits 
become complex and varied. So the creature develops. 
On this view development is entirely an expression of the one 
principle of nervous Habit. 

The second answer says: the incentive is in part, as 
before, outside the organism, that is, the external stimulus 
must remain constant; but the organism, after the first 
reaction to the stimulus, tends to repeat its lucky reactions 
again. This is the psychological theory. It finds in this 
tendency to repeat lucky movements the nervous analogue 
of pleasure, and makes it with the principle of excess dis- 
charge, following upon pleasure, the additional thing. There 
is thus an internal organic 'incentive.' By this the creature 
'goes out,' and secures its own repetitions or avoidances, but 
only in the lines of lucky chance accommodations. This we 
have designated — in the principal form in which it has been 
held — the Spencer-Bain theory. 



454 Habit and Accommodation 

But this latter theory, superior as it is to the more mechan- 
ical or ' repetition ' view of the biologists, has had in its state- 
ment a radical defect, the intimations of Darwin — who 
nowhere, to my knowledge, fully expresses an opinion — pos- 
sibly excepted. It has held, in Spencer and Bain, that the 
pleasure or pain is from the first secured by lucky adaptive 
movement. This, I have argued above in detail, cannot be 
the case ; for movements themselves reflect pleasure or pain 
only as they serve as stimuli, reproduce stimuli, or are as- 
sociated with stimuli. On the contrary, the stimuli as such 
are the agents of good or ill, pleasure or pain ; and this pleas- 
ure or pain process — index, as it is, of the fundamental vital 
processes — dictates the very first adaptive movement toward 
or away from certain kinds of stimulations. This is the third 
answer and the correct one. Otherwise the principle of 
excess — as in the form of the l heightened nervous wave ' of 
Spencer — ■ only serves to confirm in habits the lucky adapta- 
tions already hit upon. 

How shall we further conceive the process whereby, from 
many movements thus generally adated, some are selected 
as special adaptations, or particular motor functions ? This, 
it is clear, is the question of Accommodation. It occurs by 
means of excess reactions. It is opposed to habit in two 
ways : first, it has reference to new movements, — a pro- 
spective reference, — while habit has reference always to 
movements more or less old, a retrospective reference, — 
and so it runs ahead of habit; and second, it tends, by the 
selection of new movements, to come into direct conflict 
with old habitual movements, and so to disintegrate habits. 
Let us look, then, at accommodation also more closely, 
gathering up what has gone before in earlier chapters. 

In general formula: Accommodation is the principle by 
which an organism comes to adapt itself to more complex 



Summary of Theory of Development 455 

conditions 0] stimulation by performing more complex junc- 
tions} 

Various functions have been shown in what precedes to 
illustrate this principle; all functions which the individual 
has learned. Learning to act is just accommodation, noth- 
ing more nor less. Speech, tracery, handwriting, piano- 
playing, all motor acquisitions, are what accommodation 
is, i.e. adaptations to more complex conditions. The com- 
mon thing about them all is evident from the foregoing state- 
ment of the requirements of development: the maintenance 
of stimulus by selection from excessive motor discharges. This 
is Imitation. In brief, any reaction whatever, no matter how 
produced, — by accident, by suggestion, by obedience, by 
volition, by effort, under stress of pain or excitement of pleas- 
ure, — any reaction by which a useful stimulus is hailed 
back and enjoyed, or a damaging one fled from and escaped, 

— any such is a case of accommodation, and falls under the 
principle of ' circular reactions ' or ' Imitation ' now expounded. 

But continued accommodation is possible only because 
the other principle, habit, all the time conserves the past and 
gives points d'appui in solidified structure for new accom- 
modations. Inasmuch, further, as the copy becomes, by 
transference from the world to the mind, capable of internal 
revival, in memory, accommodation takes on a new character 

— a conscious, subjective character — in Volition. Volition 
arises as a phenomenon of ' persistent imitative suggestion,' 
as we have argued. That is, volition arises when a copy re- 
membered vibrates with other copies remembered or pre- 
sented, and when all the connections, in thought and action, 
of all of them, are together set in motion incipiently. The 
' set ' of motives together with a certain excess function is what 

1 Compare with these statements of Habit and Accommodation, those 
given above, Chap. VII., § 7. 



456 Habit and Accommodation 

we call attention ; and the final co-ordination of all the motor 
elements involved is volition. The physical basis of memory, 
association, thought, is, therefore, that of will also, — the 
cerebrum, — and pathological cases show clearly that aboulia 
is fundamentally a defect of synthesis in perception and 
memory, arising from one or more breaks in the copy system 
whose rise has been sketched in what precedes. 

§ 2. Interaction oj Habit and Accommodation 

We have seen — to proceed farther on our way — that 
there is one type of reaction, and only one, in which these 
two principles have a common application: reactions whose 
issue tends to reinstate, in whole or part, the very stimulation 
that started the reaction. Accommodation is there, in such a 
reaction, since the advantageous stimulation stands a better 
chance of repetition if the organism tends thus to get it ; but 
since this repeated stimulus again stimulates to action, and 
action again follows — there also is habit. So accommo- 
dation, by the very reaction which accommodates, hands over 
its gains immediately to the rule of habit. And this is the 
universal rule. 

How true, as a fact, this form of adaptation is ! A fact 
often noticed, always admired, never explained — that organ- 
isms move toward the source of light and heat and colour ! 
How can an organism get such a splendid property — that 
of being so modified by what is good for it, that it itself re- 
sponds in a way to get it again, and then, by thus getting it 
again, makes its future enjoyments of it sure and easy? 
This the theories given attempt to explain : by the law of 
'Excess' with functional selection the stimulus is maintained, 
and by the law of ' Sensori-motor association' the process is 
fixed in easy habit. 



Organic Centralization 457 

The interaction of these two principles, Accommodation 
and Habit, — Excess and Association, — gives rise to a two- 
fold factor in every organic activity of whatever kind. In 
organisms of any development — where a nervous system, 
say, is present, — the environment being a changing one, 
every structure, with its function, represents a habit which is 
being constantly modified by the law of accommodation. 
But these modifications themselves, as we have seen, pro- 
vide again for their own habituation ; so there is a constant 
erosion, and a constant accretion, to the net attainments of 
the organism. And each function can be understood only in 
the light of both the influences which have contributed to it. 
Impulse, for example, is twofold; instinct is twofold; at- 
tention is twofold; emotion is twofold: each illustrates 
habit, but each has grown by changes due to accommodation. 
Is not this a reconciliation in principle of the opposed the- 
ories of these functions, one saying that these great organic 
functions came only by composition, and the other that they 
came only by selection, intelligent or biological. 

§ 3« Organic Centralization and Specialization 

We have now seen how great habits are formed. ' Natural ' 
and ' organic ' selection fix them, and at the same time render 
them more prominent, i.e. as instincts, by erasing the evidences 
of their origin, and abbreviating the phylogenetic process in 
the growth of the individual. I use the phrase 'organic 
centralization' to denote this great outcome of development, 
— the differentiation of functions in lines of adaptation which 
run apart, so far as their particular offices and structural prod- 
ucts are concerned, but which are yet centralized. For they 
are centralized when considered together, as constituting, in 
unity and plan, the common lif e of the organism. When con- 



45 8 Habit and Accommodation 

sidered each for itself also, as a well-knit whole of many co- 
ordinated units, the same centralization is shown about a 
smaller centre ; such as the movements involved in a particular 
instinct, or the series of movements of the facial muscles in an 
'expression.' There would possibly be no need for further 
exposition of these points, since they are corollaries from the 
general theory already sketched, were it not that there are 
certain further applications. 

There are two such applications which are new, I think, 
and which serve to gather into one point of view conflict- 
ing opinions regarding two of the most refractory facts in 
current psychology. I refer to the question of the existence 
of special nerves for pleasure and pain, or either ; and to the 
attention. 

The question arises: If accommodation is secured by a 
special form of reaction called 'excess/ what relation does 
this reaction itself sustain to the principle of habit? Does 
the excess function itself also become centralized? Does it 
tend to become a separate co-ordinated function, as other 
motor discharges do ? 

It is to be expected that, in so far as the environment in 
which an organism lives is constant, any accommodation 
reaction would, taken for itself, tend to become a habit. 
So far as the presumption goes, we should expect to find 
two great kinds of reaction implicated with pleasure and 
pain. The pain reaction would tend to withdraw the 
organism from the stimulus which gives pain; and the 
pleasure reaction would tend to bring the organism into 
closer relation with the stimulus which gives pleasure. 
These two kinds of reaction would be possible for any 
muscular group whatever. All that would then be required 
would be some sense organ which would distinguish between 
the conditions of stimulation which regularly give pleasure, 



Organic Centralization 459 

— reacting to them with the forward moving reaction, — 
and those which regularly give pain — reacting to them with 
the withdrawing movement. This is probably the case. 
It is directly confirmed by the views of Meynert, Richet, 
and Bain, as far as the character of the movements is con- 
cerned ; and by the results of Dessoir and Goldscheider, as to 
the differentiation of the sense of pain. It then becomes 
a matter of scientific discovery whether actual pain nerves 
exist or not, in connection with any particular function. 
That depends upon what the race conditions of stimulation 
have actually been. If the pain stimulus has been regular 
and peculiar enough, possibly it has got itself a special ap- 
paratus ; research must decide. But if not, then not. This 
latter, the negative, is probably the case with pleasure. The 
stimulus to pleasant function is so general and normal, that 
pleasure has not become well ' specialized ' either in the organ- 
ism, or, as is very plain, in consciousness. Yet in the special 
cases in which functions have been perpetual, important, and 
uniform, there we do find pleasure as acute and definitely lo- 
calized as pain is, e.g. in the sexual function, as physiologists 
have noted ; it is not at all improbable that this function has 
a pleasure nerve apparatus. So it is possible and probable 
that pain is both a sensation, and a quale or 'tone' of other 
sensations, emotions, etc. ; a sensation, — if it has developed 
its own apparatus of reacting to definite, well-localized 
pain-giving stimulations constantly present ; a quale, — be- 
cause the organism is never completely balanced in its environ- 
ment, the stimulations representing misadjustment and pain 
are not all constant, and there are demands for the more gen- 
eral function, as in the intellectual life. So the accommo- 
dation function of pain, in connection with all possible 
stimulations, must go on just the same whether there be a 
sensation pain or not; especially in the sphere of thought, 



460 Habit and Accommodation 

sentiment, and the attentive life, since this is the latest, 
most complex, and least uniform kind of accommodation. 

On the physical side, too, the matter seems clear. The 
excess process at the basis of pleasure and pain finds channels 
of outflow which serve over and over again for the reaction 
required to repeat the pleasure, or stop the pain. The same 
connection thus serving for many instances, becomes well- 
worn and habitual ; and so a connection is formed — a circuit 

— for pleasure or pain, like the ordinary sensori-motor cir- 
cuits. If light, for example, considered as constant stimu- 
lation, serves to develop, for its different intensities, an organ 

— the eye — and certain nerves, which react only to it, 
as luminous; why can it not also develop, in connection with 
certain of its intensities, a further organ and nerve which 
react only to it as painful? It is, indeed, inevitable that, 
under favourable conditions, such a pain-apparatus should be 
developed and fixed by natural selection. 

This recognizes the distinction between ' pleasure and 
pain' on one side, and ' agreeableness and disagreeableness,' 
on the other, as developed in recent work. Pain as sensa- 
tion-content is distinct from pain as quale of other contents. 
On my view, this is a distinction due to development. Pain, 
as sensation, is pain become habitual enough, under constancy 
of stimulation, to have its own apparatus, i.e. it is pain as 
peripheral function. Pain, on the other hand, as quale of 
mental content generally, is pain of irregular stimulation, or 
pain of accommodation, i.e. pain as central function. I do not 
agree, therefore, with Miinsterberg, in finding in the move- 
ments of flexion and extension, which my theory requires in 
common with his, the genetic sources of ' agreeable ' or ' disagree- 
able ' tone. The whole theory of development, as I have shown 
above, if it is to move at all, requires that this accommodation 
pain or pleasure be due, in the first instance, to stimulus, and 



Organic Centralization 461 

that the flexion and extension movements be the organic mode 
of accommodation to the pleasure or pain-giving stimulus. 

Nevertheless, so great is organic complexity, when we 
come to take the principle of association into account, that, 
after all, in developed organisms, Miinsterberg may be right 
in making the flexion and extension movements themselves 
the direct basis of the agreeable and disagreeable quale. 
For we have seen in the case of emotion that movements at first 
purely purposive, serving utility or accommodation to stim- 
ulus, themselves get, by association, to represent the degree 
of success or failure in accommodation, and so come them- 
selves to give body to the emotion. In like manner, these 
flexion and extension movements may have passed, from being 
expressive or utility movements, to be the forerunners of the 
condition which they at first served only to express. And it 
may well be that they are thus an intermediate link between 
quale pleasure-pain, and sensation pleasure-pain. This 
is supported by the evidence — so far as it goes — which 
locates the nerve apparatus of sensation pleasure-pain in the 
muscles. On this view, it is for reporting flexion and ex- 
tension movements that this nervous apparatus has developed ; 
these flexion and extension movements standing in place of 
the pleasure- and pain-giving stimuli to which the organism 
has become accommodated. 

Possibly the most important question which remains over, 
and upon which the distinction now made between original 
and derived pain reactions seems to throw some light, is that 
which concerns the relations of so-called ' systemic ' to ' sin- 
gle-organ' pains. Theories divide on the question whether 
pains relate to the welfare of the system as a whole or to the 
welfare — nourishment, vitality, etc. — of particular organs. 
And on account of the conflicting evidence some throw over 
the ' welfare' theory of pleasure and pain altogether. The 



462 Habit and Accommodation 

principles which we have seen to be operative in develop- 
ment, show us, however, that we are able to reconcile the con- 
tradiction, at least in some degree. If sensational pain be a 
specialized function with its own motor reaction, then in it 
we have the single-organ position confirmed, and are able to 
account for the conflicts which sometimes arise — as so many 
writers, from Mill to the present, have pointed out — between 
the welfare of the organism as a. whole and that of the par- 
ticular organ or part. On the other hand, the existence of the 
non-sensational or quale pain still remains as an index of 
central and deep-seated vital conditions, and makes its own 
claim to being the original derivation-form of the pain con- 
sciousness. Genetically, we cannot begin life history with 
single-organ pains; for apart from the impossible assump- 
tion, then, of differentiated organs, such separate and 
special pain reactions would not take the place of the general 
form of hedonic reaction which we have found in organic 
development. On the other hand, the existence of special 
sensation pains in connection with functions of particular 
organs, and the probable existence of pain nerves, testify to 
the difference, in highly developed organisms, of the two 
sorts of pain. Moreover, the fact that pleasure is not so 
evidently dualistic, — not clearly sensational at all, — this is 
an additional evidence that the distinction between systemic 
and single-organ function is, with respect to its hedonic as- 
pect, as it is also, of course, in respect to its very existence at 
all, a matter of evolution. 

And another application may be made of the principle of 
specialization. One of the objections most current to the 
view that the original pain reaction took the form of dimin- 
ished vitality, suppressions of movement, contractions, and 
flexions, is that the facts show that often pain reactions are 
very violent. The struggles of an animal to escape painful 



Organic Centralization 463 

conditions, to rid itself of its annoyance, to defeat its enemy 
by aggressive and offensive action, all this is notorious. How, 
it is asked, can this be if the function of pain, in its relation to 
movement, is essentially inhibitory? The facts again are 
indisputable on both sides. We have seen some of the facts 
in the foregoing pages. In considering special emotional 
reactions and attitudes, we saw the variety and intensity of 
those accompanying fear, anger, etc., emotions of a painful 
character. 1 But, on the other hand, we have also seen that 
the child and the little animal learn movements by withdraw- 
ing and suppressing those actions which issue in pain. How 
can this contradiction be reconciled? There are two influ- 
ences at work, I think, — both already spoken of, — to which 
the seeming contradiction is due. 

First, there is the principle of antagonism which Darwin 
used under the name 'antithesis' and which we have seen in 
an earlier chapter to show itself in the special form of muscular 
antagonism with the corresponding series of antithetic motor 
attitudes. Much of the violent reaction under pain is the 
positive use of the muscular combinations antagonistic to 
those through which the actual pain stimulation would dis- 
charge. When in pain from a movement, or from a mere 
condition without movement, we do not violently stimulate 
the same movement which brought the pain, nor the move- 
ments appropriate to continue the unpleasant condition. 
These are suppressed by the law of inhibition and withdrawal. 
But we do throw into violent activity certain antagonistic or 
associated muscular combinations whose action brings relief. 
The real 'excess' does not attach therefore to the pain reaction 
as such, but to the benefit-bringing actions which are the 
proved resources of the organism when in conditions of pain. 

1 Chap. VIII., especially § 4, may be read in connection with the 
following explanations. 



464 Habit and Accommodation 

Second, there is no reason that the pain reactions them- 
selves — the reactions of withdrawal, retraction, flexion — 
should not be at times intense. We have seen that by the 
principle of centralization, reactions of the imitative type, 
whether they be painful or pleasurable, become habits. This 
tendency to habit, we now also see, has in the case of pain 
taken on a positive form in pain as sensation, with probably 
a nerve apparatus of its own. When this has once happened 
the response to pain condition would, by the law of dyna- 
mogenesis, be intense when the stimulation is itself in- 
tense. This would mean that in the growth of the organism 
it has been advantageous to respond vigorously to stimulations 
which were damaging and so to get rid of them. That does 
not disprove the contention that the normal response to pain 
is a lessened one. It is as if a man put more money into a 
losing venture as the most effective way to turn it into a gain- 
ing venture ; and it simply means that in business, as in devel- 
opment, it is only at a higher stage that certain complex con- 
ditions realize themselves at all. 

Putting these explanations together there does not remain, 
I think, much evidence, apart from those convulsive semi- 
pathological chaotic writhings and twistings into which violent 
physical pain may throw the organism, that pain reactions as 
such are ever expansive and aggressive. 1 They may be intense, 

1 In addition to these two general reasons for the seeming antithesis on 
this point, we should expect the difference between 'systemic' and 'single- 
organ' pains to complicate the cases still further. For a reaction may be 
evidently in excess from one point of view, and not so from the other. The 
seeming excess movements of physical pain are generally in their character, 
as was said, those of antithetic habit, and so represent systemic methods of 
defence and offence. The direct withdrawals and inhibitions, on the con- 
trary, represent the more direct response to the particular pain stimulation 
as such. The whole case serves to teach the lesson that no single class of 
facts derived from the mature and complex organism should be considered 
alone, or lead us to prejudge a case in which genetic processes have been 



Organic Centralization 465 

they may be associated with all sorts of utility reactions, and 
they may represent nothing but sheer mechanical revolt, as 
Darwin long ago showed. 

Now the same effect of 'centralization' is seen in the 
attention, as may be gathered from the positions already 
taken. Attention has been defined as genetically the 
reverberation of the 'excess' process as it has become 
fixed in habit. By the law of ' sensori-motor association,' 
this backward wave gets connected with all the sensory 
processes. Now just in as far as this wave is the same 
for different sensations, just in so far it tends to be ' central- 
ized,' in a constant function — integrated into a habit — 
involving a regular set of motor phenomena, such as the wrin- 
kling of the brows, setting of the glottis, etc., always found 
in acts of attention. The organism thus acquires a habit 0] 
accommodation, on a higher level. This is attention. When 
memory and imagination appear, this new form of response 
enables the organism to throw itself into attitudes favourable 
to the best reception and assimilation of material of all kinds. 

Yet as with pain, so here. This attention-habit, this cen- 
tralized function, is not all that the attention is. The original 
excess function must be kept in view. No preliminary setting 
of attention is an adequate accommodation to an intellectual 
stimulus, an idea still to be received ; it is adequate only to 
hold stimuli by which it has been before excited. Each new 
accommodation to idea carries a motor excess discharge of 
its own, and this also enters into the sense of attention, 
making each act of attention, and each sense-type of attention, 
different, as was said above. 

The terms of interaction of the two principles, finally, 

concerned ; and on the other hand, the enormous complexity of these genetic 
influences should make us to the last degree moderate and undogmatic in our 
support of theories. 

2H 



466 Habit and Accommodation 

require that the reaction maintain its stimulus, and that this 
stimulus again repeat the reaction. The one type of reaction, 
therefore, which an organism must have, is a 'circular' or 
stimulus-repeating one. We have found it best to name this 
type of reaction, for purposes of psycho-physical definition, 
Imitation, and to call it, as a typical neurological function, 
'circular reaction.' This is the unit, therefore, the essential 
fact, of all motor-development ; and this shows the simplicity 
of the whole theory. 

The place of imitation has now been made out in a tenta- 
tive way throughout the development of the active life. It 
seems to be everywhere. But it is, of course, a matter of 
natural history that this type of action is of such extraordi- 
nary and unlooked-for importance. If we grant a phylo- 
genetic development of mind, reaction of the imitative type, 
as defined above, may be considered the mode and the only 
mode of the progressive adaptation of the organism to its en- 
vironment. The further philosophical questions as to the 
nature of mind, its worth and its dignity, remain under 
adjudication. We have learned too much in modern philos- 
ophy to argue from the natural history of a thing to its ultimate 
constitution and meaning — and we commend this considera- 
tion to the biologists. As far as there is a more general lesson 
to be learned from the considerations advanced, it is that we 
should avoid just this danger, i.e. of interpreting one kind of 
existence for itself, in an isolated way, without due regard to 
the other kinds of existence with which its manifestations are 
mixed up. 

The antithesis, for example, between the self and the world is 
not a finished antithesis psychologically considered. The self 
is realized by taking in 'copies' from the world, and the world 
is enabled to set higher copies only through the constant 



Organic Centralization 467 

reactions of the individual self upon it. Morally I am as 
much a part of society as physically I am a part of the world's 
fauna; and as my body gets its best explanation from the 
point of view of its place in a zoological scale, so morally I 
occupy a place in the social order ; and an important factor in 
the understanding of me is the understanding of it. 

The great question, which is writ above all natural history 
records, is, — when put in the phraseology of imitation, — 
What is the final World-copy, and how did it get itself set? 



APPENDIX B 1 

CASES OF THE USE OF THE RIGHT AND LEFT HANDS RESPECTIVELY, 
GATHERED FROM THE REPORT OF COLONEL GARRICK MALLERY, 
ON "SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS." 2 
BY PROFESSOR LESTER JONES OF MIAMI UNIVERSITY, OHIO. 

"In the main part of Colonel Mallery's paper, where the cases 
cited are used as merely illustrative of the writer's own subject, 
the following data for the problem of right-handedness have been 
obtained : — 



No. of Cases 


Left Hand 


Right Hand 


Both Hands 


cited 


used 


used 


used 


66 


i 


37 


28 



"In about a thousand illustrations appended to the paper 
proper, the left hand is used distinctively alone twenty-three times. 

"In the same appendix, in a dialogue of a hundred and sixteen 
signs used, the left hand acts distinctively alone five times. 

"In the Natei narrative of seventy-five signs, the left hand is 
used distinctively alone three times, the right hand twenty-seven 
times. 

"In the Patricio narrative of sixty-six signs, the left hand is 
used distinctively alone three times, the right hand twenty times. 3 

"It is worth observing that in the dialogue and two narratives, 
making a total of about three hundred signs, or less than one-third 
of the thousand signs cited, we find the left hand used alone eleven 

1 Appendix A (in the first and second editions) is an index of observations 
recorded in the volume. 

3 First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1879-1880. 

3 In the above series, only those cases have been considered in which the 
circumstances involved allow a choice of either hand. 

469 



470 Appendix B 

times, or about one-half the full number of times occurring in the 
entire thousand cases. This would seem to indicate that the more 
reflective the thought becomes, the more the left hand figures, 
while in the isolated more unpremeditated forms, it is the right 
hand that invariably springs into action. 

"Two illustrations must suffice to show the general preference 
of the right hand over the left. In describing Indians conversing 
about the camp-fire, Mr. Mallery writes (p. 340) : ' Two Indians 
whose blankets are closely held to their bodies by the left hand, 
which is necessarily rendered unavailable for gesture, will severally 
thrust the right from beneath the protecting fold, and converse 
freely. The same is true when one hand of each holds the bridle 
of a horse.' Again, this preference is well shown in the gesture 
sign for sunrise (p. 371): 'The forefinger of the right hand is 
crooked to represent the sun's disk, and pointed or extended to 
the left, then slightly elevated. 

"'In this connection it may be noted that when the gesture is 
carefully made in open country, the pointing would generally be 
to the east, and the body turned so that its left would be in that 
direction.' 

"The two-hand movement in making a sign is used, perhaps, as 
much as the right hand alone; yet in almost every case of the 
double-hand movement the right hand takes the initiative and 
plays the active role, with the left as merely supplementary. For 
example, the sign gesture for 'hard' is made thus: open the left 
hand and strike against it several times with the right. 

"Again, in making the sign gesture for 'done,' hold the extended 
left hand horizontally before the body, fingers pointing to the right, 
and cut edgewise downward, with extended right hand, past the 
tips of the left. 

"Many signs appearing to be made by the left hand alone, on 
closer scrutiny can be included in the two-hand movement. For 
example, in the expression 'three white men,' 'white men' is 
made first with right hand alone ; but to convey the meaning, the 
right hand must persist until the sign for three is made, which 
remains for the left hand to do. It is in reality a double-hand 



Appendix C 471 

movement with the left to be used as necessity requires, supple- 
mentary to the right. " 

Note by the Author. — It is evident that this report supports the view 
that the right hand was pre-eminently the 'expressive' member in pre-historic 
times. The common signs among different tribes, found also in deaf-mute 
sign language, show that many of these forms of expression are not late con- 
ventions, but rather matter of real aboriginal usage. If, then, they date back 
to the period before the development of speech, we have much reason for 
believing that right-handedness is originally a one-sided expressive function. 
Cf. Chap. IV., § 2, above. 



APPENDIX C 



ON PROFITING BY EXPERIENCE AND IMITATION 

We may illustrate in the field of individual experience. Soon 
after birth a young chick begins to learn as we say 'by experience.' 
He pecks instinctively at all objects of appropriate size, and by 
trial learns those which are good to eat and those which should be 
avoided. How can this be called imitative? In the first place, 
we may say there is in consciousness only the visual image of the 
object, and the native reaction of pecking follows upon it. The 
result of this is to give the chick either a good or a bad taste. In 
the former case the experience of the good taste becomes asso- 
ciated with the sight of the object — say a caterpillar — so that 
at future meetings with the same sort of caterpillar, the instinctive 
tendency to peck is reinforced by the imitative tendency to repeat 
the good taste. This reinforcement tends to modify and even to 
supersede the original instinctive manner of reacting, as is readily 
seen in the way the expression of the instinct of pecking is modified 
by the experience. In the other case — that of a bad taste, let us 
say, using Professor Lloyd Morgan's 2 example of the taste of a 

1 In the foreign editions this is matter added on p. 290, to which it may 
be considered a footnote, illustrating the formulation there given in Italics. 

2 Habit and Instinct, pp. 41 f. I may also illustrate this principle by 
replying to a criticism by Professor Lloyd Morgan of the definition of imi- 
tation given above, i.e. a reaction which tends to repeat or reinstate its own 



472 Appendix C 

cinnabar caterpillar — the effect of imitation is the reverse. With 
the sight of the worm now comes up by association the bad taste. 
The imitative reaction is now to avoid the taste ; this tends to keep 
the instinct of pecking in check; and by repetition gradually 
suppresses it altogether in the particular case of this worm. But 
now further, in both cases, the visual presentation of the caterpillar 
stands by association in the place of the taste, as the terminus of 
the appropriate reaction, which thus loses its original character as a 
reflex and also its acquired character as an imitation. The case 
may be taken as a typical one ; since it illustrates, first, the acquisi- 
tion of experience by the use of native reactions ; second, the modi- 
fication and differentiation of these native reactions by imitation 
and association ; and third, the continued use of these modified re- 
actions in connection with the original objective stimuli, through 
substitution. 

And the full genetic application of the theory would account for 
the existence of the native pecking reflex in the chick as a selection 
of variations coincident with imitative accommodations found 
useful to individuals. 1 

II 2 

FLUCTUATIONS OF ATTENTION 

An interesting confirmation of the theory of attention as motor 
phenomenon is afforded by recent experiments of " fluctuations of 

stimulus. Professor Morgan cites the chick which crouches or runs away 
when seeing others do so; this is imitative, although not reproducing the 
chick's stimulation (in that it cannot see its own actions) but only the 
'onlooker's' {loc. cit., p. 168). The answer is that in such cases there is an 
imitative reproduction by the chick of its own movement sensations which are 
associated with the sight of the equivalent movements in others. The latter 
(visual) stimulations are substituted in whole or part for the muscular sensa- 
tions. Accordingly the action does reproduce both the chick's stimulation 
(muscular) and the onlooker's (visual). This makes untenable Professor 
Morgan's distinction {loc. cit., p. 170 f.) between 'imitation* (instinctive) 
and 'copying' (intelligent reproduction by attention to the copy), although it 
is often convenient to observe it. 

1 Cf . also the cases given above, Chap. X., § 3. * Note to p. 440. 



Appendix C 473 

the attention." It has been found by Dunlap {Psychological 
Review, XL, 1904, pp. 308, 319) not only that a barely audible 
continuous sound has periods of inaudibility, but that a just in- 
audible discontinuous sound reports its own breaks in some way, 
even though it does not become audible. As I interpret these 
results, — variations in the concentration processes of attention 
result in varying intensities of the sound, even to inaudibility ; and, 
on the other hand, interruptions in an inaudible sound produce 
variations in the reflex concentration processes which are felt 
and remarked even though the sound does not itself come above the 
audible threshold. In other words, the sensori-motor association 
is functionally and cerebrally so close that it works its results as 
between stimulus and attentive response whether or not one or 
both of the terms be clearly conscious, subconscious, or altogether 
hidden in a mass of irrelevant happenings (as in cases of distrac- 
tion). It shows the operation of dynamogenesis in this particular 
response, the attention, of the delicacy shown for other responses 
by the cases of ' suggestion ' reported above (in Chapter VI.). 



INDEX 



Aboulia, 378 ff. 

Accommodation, effects of, 21; sugges- 
tion as A., 161 f . ; A. and Habit, 203 f ., 
277; summary of, 432 ff. 

Adaptation, organic, 171 ff. 

Agraphia, 378 ff. 

Amusia, 298 ff. 

Analogies, of development, 14 ff. 

Animal, see Phylogenesis, Memory, 
Recapitulation, Attention, Grega- 
riousness. 

Antithesis, law of, 229 ff. 

Aphasia, 369 ff. 

Apperception, theory of, 292 ff. 

Assimilation, theory of, 292 ff. 

Association of ideas, physical basis of, 
264 ff.; origin of, 286 ff.; sensori- 
motor, 436 ff. 

Attention, its genetic formula, 297 f., 
302 f., 375 f. ; origin of, 428 ff.; vol- 
untary, 428 f.; reflex, 435 f.; devel- 
opment of, 436 ff. 

Attitudes, motor, origin of, 209 ff. ; ha- 
bitual, 226 ff. 

Auto-suggestion, 131 f. 

Avenarius, R., 322 f. 

Bain, A., 172, 176 ff.; 267, note; 278, 

339, note. 
Balfour, F. M., 26, 34, 194. 
Bashfulness, 139 ff. 
Bastian, 291, 470. 
Bateson, 195, note. 
Belief, 307 f., 447 f. 
Bernheim, 155. 

Binet, A., 38 f., 51, 258, 363, 380 ff. 
Bradley, 445, note. 
Brazier, 90, 420 ff. 
Broadbent, 99, note. 
Brown-Sequard, 69, note. 

' Centralization,' organic, 457 ff. 

Charcot, 156. 

Chevreul, 250. 

Child Study, 1 ff., 34 ff. 

Circular reaction, 249 ff. 

Class recognition, 302 ff. 



Clifford, 18. 

Colour, perception of, by infants, 37 ff., 
40 ff. 

Concept, 310 ff. 

Conception, origin of, 306 ff. 

Consciousness, the origin of, 197 ff. 
'Contrary suggestions, 137 f. 

Control, by suggestion, 136; volun- 
tary, 448 ff. 

Cushing, F. H., 65, note. 

Darwin, C, 185, 195, 228, 273, 317. 

Deliberative suggestion, 120. 

Development, analogies of, 14 ff.; 
theories of, 161 ff. ; summary on, 452 
ff. ; D. of the several functions, see 
Memory, Attention, Association, 
Speech, Handwriting, Song, etc. 

Dextrality, 56 ff. 

Distance, perception of, by infants, 48 ff . 

Drawings, of children, 78 ff. 

Dreams, as emotion stimulus, 130. 

Dynamogenic method of child study, 
35 fi. 

Dynamogenesis, 41, 157 ff., 214. 

Eimer, 256 f. 

'Eject,' 17, 119 ff. 

Emotion, stimulated by dreams, 130; 

expressions of, 211, etc.; genetic 

theory of, 316 ff. 
Ethical emotion, genesis of, 324 ff. 
Exaltation of the senses, 32 f. 
'Excess,' law of, 170 f., 179. 
Expression, functions of, 63 ff. ; motor 

E., 209 ff.; emotional E., 211 ff. 

Fechner, 63. 

Fere, Ch., 131, note; 376 ff. 
Foster, M., 21 f. 
Franckl-Hochwart, 68, 410 ff. 
Franklin, Mrs. C. L., 41, 55, note. 
Functional selection, 95. 



Galton, 195, note. 

Garbini, 38. 

General notion, origin of, 3] 

475 



2ff. 



476 



Index 



Gley, 42. 

Goldscheider, 90, note; 95 ff. 

Groos, 247; 279. 

Habit, effects of, 19; Suggestion as EL, 
161 ff.; H. and Accommodation, 203 
f.; law of associated H., 228 ff.; as 
basis of unity, 271; in memory, 277 
ff. ; summary on, 452 ff. 

Handwriting, origin of, 88 ff. 

Hedonic, consciousness, 167 f.; H. ex- 
pression, 225 ff. 

Hegel, 328, note. 

Heredity, 193 ff. 

Hodge, 257, note. 

Hoffding, H., 179, 423 f., 439; 447, 
note. 

Huestis, C. H., 122. 

Hypnotic suggestion, 149 ff. 

Hysteria, 383 ff. 

Identity, principle of, 307 f. 

Ideo-motor suggestion, 123 ff. 

Imagination, origin of, 276 ff. 

Imitation, tracery, 78 ff.; in infants, 124 
ff.; simple and persistent, 125 f., 357 
f. ; organic, 249 ff. ; conscious, 276 
ff.; in animals, 281 ; classification of , 
332 ff.; plastic, 335 ff.; method of 
observing, 350 ff.; persistent, 355 ff.; 
self, 404. 

Infancy, 27 ff. 

Infant; I. Psychology, 1 ff.; new 
method of studying, 34 ff.; colour 
perception of, 37 ff.; distance per- 
ception of, 48 ff.; right-handedness 
in, 56 ff.; movements of, 78; draw- 
ings of, 48 ff. 

Inhibitory suggestion, 135 ff. 

'Introjection,' theory of, 322. 

James, W., 62, 73 f., 224, 233, 354, 357, 

445- 
Janet, Pierre, 102; 338, note; 359, 

note; 3761!. 
Jastrow, J., 42, 178. 
Jennings, 258, 262, 433. 
Jones, Lester, 65, note; Appendix 

B. 
Judgment, Brentano's view of, 307. 

v. Kries, 422 ff. 
Kussmaul, 79. 



Ladd, G. T., 76, note; 128. 
Lange's theory of emotion, 217. 
Left-handedness, 56 ff. 
Lehmann, A., 40, 299. 
Lichtheim, 392 ff. 
Liegeois, 154, note. 

Magendie, 42. 

Mallery, 65, note; Appendix B. 

Mantegazza, 228. 

Marsden, R. E., 52. 

Marshall, A. M., 19 f. 

Marshall, H. R., 233. 

Mazel, 62, note. 

Memory, physical basis of, 264 ff.; 

origin of, 276 ff. 
Method of child study, 34 ff. 
Meynert, 168 f. 

Micro-organisms, behaviour of, 257 ff. 
Minot, C. S., 23; 202; 263, 273. 
Mirror- writing, 95. 
Moll, 107. 
Morgan, Lloyd, 74; 120; 202; 262; 274; 

283, 421. 
Mosso, 228. 
Motor square, 109. 
Movements, of infants, 78 ff. 
Muller, Max, 34. 
Miinsterberg, 44, note; 63, note; 168, 

note. 
Music, faculty of, 67 f.; 398. 

Nancy school, on hypnotism, 156. 

Natural selection, place of, in develop- 
ment, 163 ff. 

Neo- Darwinian theory of heredity, 193 
ff. 

Neo-Lamarckian theory of heredity, 193 
ff. 

Ochorowicz, 107. 

O'Connor, J. T., 62, note; 81. 

Ogle, 71, note. 

Ontogenesis, 1 ff. 

Organic, selection, 24, 165 f., 283; O. 

imitation, 249 ff. 
Osborn, H. F., 21, note. 

Pain, suggestions of, 136 f.; its nervous 
analogue, 167 f.; Bain's and Spen- 
cer's views of, 175 f:; as sensation, 
458 ff- 

Paris school, on hypnotism, 150. 



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